ONCE YOU WERE HERE

ONCE YOU WERE HERE
(September 12, 2001)

Sometimes I spend lunch sitting by the lakeshore with eyes
on the same image we shared, now stored in your memory.
Today a seagull sits on the pier not two feet in front of me,
shrieking as though demanding I share my food; once he
realizes I have nothing but grief, almost in retaliation
he raises his voice intolerably in both pitch and decibels,
tearing loose my unwept tears; they rise to the surface swiftly,
burning all the way like nitrogen bubbles in a luckless diver's blood.
Piercing my eyes, instead of cleansing, this sudden flashflood
serves to stir up the demons in my shipwrecked dreams,
leaving in its wake the ghost of a thousand primal screams
still imbedded in my soul, the inheritance of a stillborn child.

~ Broken Wings ~

Back Home