Glancing once and then
twice out the window
with the curtain
pulled back,
inventing errands that
naturally pass by the
door already opened
and hoping
for the approaching
sound of tires.
____________
Posted to TikTok @vera_s_scott with a poignant song by the wonderful songwriter Dermot Kennedy.
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/
Captured here
in the breath
curled
under my fingers
is all I could
hold, all
of you I could
save.
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
brief salvage 