If we could just start small,
I say, let it.
Forget the worn hemlines and wearing seams.
Start with sewing back the buttons.
I remember how we circled the playground,
Picking pennies from the sand and filling our pockets.
We’d empty them out in our sandbox at home,
Make copper castles. Whistle through the holes in our mouths.
I regret I never wrote it down,
the morning I woke up with the perfect line,
a minor melody that was sad but mostly sweet,
and so much older than me.
All I want is to finally get it right.
To land the arrow in the deep red heart of the center.
To watch it stay.
To leave and not know and not know at all
If it falls when I go.
hmm, it seems that kind of day. a friend I had lunch with today talked about that regret, not keeping the songs of his youth - he'd written songs for Johnny Cash as a young boy, about jailbreaks and things he didn't know anything about...and tossed them all in the river when he left Nashville, thinking they were more Johnny's than his.
ReplyDeleteand all the brilliant poems I write in my mind
ReplyDeletejust before I fall asleep
that are scrambled and lost forever