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 …
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'.
Linking, a year later, to the Tuesday Platform for 27 Oct. 2015 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.
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.
ReplyDeleteOh Rosemary this just grabs my heart and will not let go. A powerful capturing of loss and loneliness.
ReplyDeleteThank 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.
ReplyDeleteI and the night grew old from not holding you.... Goodness that is a beautiful line. Poignant.
ReplyDeleteI think the reality of alone-ness is more than we imagine, and you put the feeling into words and made others feel it too.
ReplyDeleteOh 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).
ReplyDeleteThank you, Bjorn. Yes, it would be a perfect fit, but it is not a new poem so I think it is ineligible.
DeleteThis 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.
ReplyDeleteThe warmth may have deserted them, but the feelings are still there. Love certainly is not easy to erase from memory!
ReplyDeleteHank
This is excellent. I especially like "I and the night grew old
ReplyDeletefrom not holding you"
A great love story does have that lasting tug
ReplyDeleteHave a nice Tuesday
Much love...
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!
ReplyDeleteI'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..
This is so touching. Beautifully written and heartbreakingly real.
ReplyDeleteVery 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.
ReplyDeleteSad 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.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous and aching, Rosemary. I especially think that your open-ended lines and last line with the ellipses is super-effective. Sending a hug! :)
ReplyDeleteYes, Rosemary ... I feel the longing in your words. I've experienced those very feelings, you've described them well.
ReplyDeleteThe poem is heartbreaking. But even in sadness I can appreciate the beauty of: "I and the night grew old from not holding you".
ReplyDeleteThis 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!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, Rosemary.