After Fifteen Years

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(If you are viewing this in the Reader, poem will not be formatted correctly.  Please click on the blog title above the photo to view this post from my blog where it will be in the correct shape.)

After 15 Years

Your memory                                                   cuts so sharply
through my dream’s beginning that I wake,
gasping like a fish on the sand
left by some fisherman
too intent upon his next catch
to end it cleanly.

In its tight skin,
I gasp for air,
rise as it cannot rise
and like you cannot rise
out to that night sea air
which is the only coolness
in a month of burned days.

My memory, curving round,
pulls in the memory of you
like gills seeking to understand
the waterless air.

Landed by some bigger fisherman
whose bait you couldn’t resist,
“Oh,” you said, just “Oh,”
before you took the hook,
slipping from my grasp
as I held on, held on,
let go.

15 thoughts on “After Fifteen Years”

  1. Pingback: Color Your World: Manatee Gray | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Hi Bernadette. I have so much trouble keeping tack of URLS to post. If you see this, can you send me an URL for the salon that would be good for each posting or does it change every week? I know. This should be perfectly clear to me but I am continually confused about how to locate things on the blogs. Many times I get my posting URLs from the postings of friends. That’s how I found you.

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    2. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Oops. I forgot to tell you that the name for a poem where the shape of the poem mimics its subject is “shape poetry.” This is one of the reasons I center my poetry. It’s amazing how many times this happens by accident. Perhaps it is a marrying of the artist and the writer in me that my mind just naturally creates the shapes as I write. It was true in this case. The only alteration I made was to split the first line a bit to create the fish tail.

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        1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          You should come to La Manzanilla again some time. This place is so filled with life! I went to an open mike tonight and it was amazing. Several poets read wonderful work and the music was exceptional. LM is so filled with things to do that I’m actually feeling a bit overwhelmed. Just hard to say no. Can’t believe I only have two weeks to go. It went fast.

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