Poem 257

This goes all the way back to when I was seventeen … it was the next poem I wrote after Poem 1, so my second properly adult poem – though the concerns and affectations are obviously adolescent the rhyming I think is great and lines from this have remained with me for getting on for half a century now …

… yes Peppermint Bay is from The Good Ship Lollipop as lisped sweetly by Shirley Temple – I intended it to signify growing out of childhood fantasy into real life and also out of the idyll of a brief affair …

… the poem is me picturing myself as some Dylanesque itinerate hobo of romance farewelling his latest summer hook up, the standard sorry babe gotta be traveling on kind of bullshit – I know, but give me a break, I was still in high school and had yet to spend a day – or a night – in bed with anyone …

( I love the triple and quadruple rhymes – today/away/Bay, turning/churning/journeying, rise/eyes/demise/sighs, dead/bed/head, tiles/miles/file, sun/come/done/ocean – and the way they fall naturally into a rhythm that is a step forward from a locked-down tumpty-tumpty form … image-wise I like the May grey sea, the cold whale both massive and distant, moonwet country miles is great, as is the assonance of oaks and smoky railroads and the last image of memory netting up brighter times … nice too how this moves from morning through afternoon to night … )

Leaving Letter

When I awoke in this morning
the wind at the door said today
and looking out I felt the cold whale rise
massive and far away
while leaves that pelted at our windows
were the May grey sea come churning
and hungry to Peppermint Bay

so now I knew of my turning
but you unaware the night had
spewed me empty as fish eyes
and set me now on journeying
would be hurt your love's demise
so quickly done absently torn
and I indifferent dead
it's 3 o'clock the tv sighs
of a day spent in your bed
writing this and the trees and sun
trundle endless across the tiles

so much
                let slide the tide in my head
out in moonwet country miles
in oaks and smoky railroads
I walk where you cannot come
carrying love in a leather file
and if this poem has done
little else I know that now you see
me casting the strands of memory
like nets upon the bright ocean