I wrote a poem in my dream last night. A friend whom I haven’t seen in several years was walking down a staircase and several people whom I didn’t recognize were milling around. I leaned over the top railing and shouted to my friend, “Revise with me!” and then I called out this poem. She stopped to listen, but never replied.
If we start at the same time
from the same place
with my right hand
touching your left
our feet will move together
perfectly.
I have never glimpsed you in the delicate
powder of cabbage butterflies flickering
across fields, nor on the frail
wings of earthy brown sparrows
who peck and scrabble at sidewalks,
not even in the gold and rosy braid
painted along the horizon every morning.
But in the torrential battering of rain
pelting grass blades and windows,
flooding streets and cities,
crashing over bridges and shifting
houses from foundations,
you shine.
Twice each day cars
converge on the street out front
as if there is no other journey
to travel from east to west.
Their greed to gain asphalt
is visible from the window, how
they press frontside to backside eager
to move forward. Pedestrians
prance and stride on the sidewalks,
free in the self-deception that they
are not on the same sojourn.
Remember when we lived
as leaves and people
mistook us for the way
to fly
into everything
around us
~Based on the photo by Charles Davies Photography https://www.facebook.com/charlesdavisnaturephotography/
This early rain laughs
at our windshields and headlights,
floods happily across street corners.
It knows, it delights in knowing
that after all the water
comes ice.
Would you give,
trade, or exchange
it or hang on
tightly afraid of never
seeing it again?
Drowned cities
spanning the globe
from John Franklin to Roald Amundsen,
all claim to be Atlantis.
Each one shows off their stone arch. Each one
bears a painted image of warriors still in battle,
or women collecting jugs of water despite
being in the deepest fathoms of it.
Each one declares authenticity, holds up their ruins
and begs to be remembered, as
all of us ask to be remembered,
to be loved for eternity:
I was here. I was here.
Please
never forget me.
© 2021 Vera S. Scott
“. . . there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.” – Plato
You never were real
genuinely alive, I mean, an actual breathing,
cussing, jig dancing human being.
You were only an idea,
a notion,
like an ex-husband
early on in the relationship
before the ex-part set in, or maybe like
a superstar who doesn’t fart or scratch
in any of the wrong places at the wrong times.
You existed so character one
had a reason to battle against character two
on the way to someplace else that never existed either.
I’m sorry.
I couldn’t simply turn you into a plot twist.
I had to completely write you out.
What mother wants
her son as a monument,
the rider of a stallion with
both front legs raised,
displaying a plague
that no one reads anymore?
What mother wants
her daughter as a tweetstorm,
thousands of brisk words
and sentences that beg,
plea, and demand
a freedom that never arrives?
What mother wants
her child resting unmarked,
buried with all the other nameless
in unhallowed ground that eventually
gets used as a parking lot?
What mother wants
to carry that much sadness
and claim that it’s pride, say that honor
can supersede the memory
of baby-fine hair, tiny snores,
and all of those silly giggles?
None of us.
It is simply what we do.
brief salvage 