I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

15 October 2014

If I Told You

If I told you how cold I felt last night,
if I told you that I and the night grew old
from not holding you, helpless to press you
against my breast, helpless to fight against
endless regrets for the blessing of you
being over and gone, being past and done,
so I’m left here endlessly alone …

If I told you all that, would you, could you, come back
to hold and enfold me and make me feel whole?
No, I know that you won't: you’re really a soul
and the old ways are over and you have evolved.
So I turn to remembrance, the semblance of real,
and I feel still the love that we did have, and will
in the cycles of birth and rebirth, forever …

31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar /Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Use various kinds of repetition.

Linking, a year later, to the Tuesday Platform for 27 Oct. 2015 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

20 comments:

  1. Yes. "And I feel still the love that we did have, and will....forever." So moving, Rosemary - the loneliness is palpable, and I know just how it feels.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh Rosemary this just grabs my heart and will not let go. A powerful capturing of loss and loneliness.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you both for your empathy. I was a bit afraid to post this one for fear of worrying my friends! Unlike the last, this of course is not fictional. However, I cope.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I and the night grew old from not holding you.... Goodness that is a beautiful line. Poignant.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think the reality of alone-ness is more than we imagine, and you put the feeling into words and made others feel it too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh that regret.. afterwards.. the desperation of the night. I think there are moments when it's too hard, but dawn and poetry is there to help you.. (BTW this is a perfect fit for today's Poetics at dVerse I think).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Bjorn. Yes, it would be a perfect fit, but it is not a new poem so I think it is ineligible.

      Delete
  7. This moves me even more the second reading.....especially poignant is "I and the night grew old". Sigh. Me too, kiddo. I love "you're a soul...and you have evolved". I do still think , as soul, he peeks in at you often, my friend. You had a great love.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The warmth may have deserted them, but the feelings are still there. Love certainly is not easy to erase from memory!

    Hank

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is excellent. I especially like "I and the night grew old
    from not holding you"

    ReplyDelete
  10. A great love story does have that lasting tug

    Have a nice Tuesday

    Much love...

    ReplyDelete
  11. I've lost a couple people that I held dear in my life. Sometimes I wish I could rewind time with the flick of a finger and undo some of the things I neglected to do while they were alive. Unfortunately life is strange and I've learned to appreciate what I do have before me more. And like you've said there is always that semblance of life that still remains, and that is something that surely helps. Great story!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm glad that you wrote this, Rosemary. It makes me appreciate more still what have, who I have to spend my life with. I do not sleep well or early even if she is gone one night. And I tell her basically what you have related in the futile wishes when a death, divorce, or other for sure final separation occurs. Only mine are not so perfectly expressed. But I feel for you as yours are definite and won't be told to whom it matters. (But you remember, my divorce was devastating to me for a few years with no possibility of reconciliation as she remarried very soon, too soon legally.)
    ..

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is so touching. Beautifully written and heartbreakingly real.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Very sad.As Jim says your poem makes us appreciate the significant other in our lives and reminds us that we too will experience your situation one day. Thank you for your beautiful poem of loss. I hope things get a little easier as time passes.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sad and majestic. There's a confluence here of the lover and the Divine Husband, the presence of the deity in a mortal lover's touch, and that mortal lover's magnification, through absence, in the divine. Yet in a fallen age both are ghostly, and so we have to use the small exempla of presence to suffice. Yes.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Gorgeous and aching, Rosemary. I especially think that your open-ended lines and last line with the ellipses is super-effective. Sending a hug! :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Yes, Rosemary ... I feel the longing in your words. I've experienced those very feelings, you've described them well.

    ReplyDelete
  18. The poem is heartbreaking. But even in sadness I can appreciate the beauty of: "I and the night grew old from not holding you".

    ReplyDelete
  19. This is so beautifully written,its amazing the effect love has on people..Ah, deep, personal feelings poured out in poetic line after line...the longing that many can relate to...sigh!
    Beautiful, Rosemary.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated and will be visible after being approved by the blog owner. If you can only comment anonymously, please include your name in the comment, just so I know who's talking to me.