I see now that posting poems from APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN and Other Mythic Voices has become a means for me to explore my memoirs as well as my poetry. I find it good to see where these poems came from......they are all touchstones along the way.
I have never done marriage well, and I bear my ex no ill will, indeed, I think of him with affection. I doubt he shares my opinion, which is ok. At the end of the day, are relationships really "failures" when they end? They last however long they last. Or don't last. What we take away, be it friendship or enmity, memories kept or discarded, is experience and growth. At the time I wrote this poem he had just met a woman who, I believe, he is still with, and I am glad that he found a partnership I could not give him.
The Rune of Ending
What can be said, now
when all words are spent
and the word has finally been spoken:
we go now to our separate houses
relieved. At least a course has been named.
Our lives are severed, our story is told.
We will each surely tell that story, and strive and laugh
and talk late into the night, and kiss lips salty
with tears and love;
but not with each other, not again.
Here the tearing ends, here ends remorse and reprisal,
here end dreams and plans.
We will not travel to Scotland,
Walk together among ancient monoliths
in the white mists of our imagination.
We will not walk, again, on a warm beach in Mexico,
toasting each other with margaritas.
That was once. It has to be enough.
I will not call you mine, husband.
You will not call me yours.
And our cat is now your cat, our teapot is now my teapot.
I touch a potted plant,
remembering its place on our breakfast table.
We divide the spoils, humane, courteous, fair.
A canyon has opened between us, we are each old enough
to know its name, to view its depths without passion.
There is no bridge to cross this time.
Beloved, I must now forgive myself as well as you,
cast my stone into this abyss
and bless the woman who has not yet come
to stand by your side,
wave with grace from across this canyon's lip,
then turn,
and walk my own path.
(1997)
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