(This poem is brought to you by walking in the early morning
twilight,
And keeping L. A.
Woman by the record player)
I never get up this early any more
Unless it’s in a panic
When my eyes open and it’s still dark
And I slip out of bed
It’s too early to have perspective
So instead I feel the full loss
Of all those stupid photos I stupidly deleted
Like someone’s mom, too eager
Trying to clean things up in a frenzy.
And they’re really gone.
What’s left: an empty album,
And flashes across my mind.
A chalky M in a mountain, framed just so,
A sort of selfie monogram.
California is already a haunted place, a dream place, a
weird place,
A place for higher weirdness and high points, high lights,
high hikes
A chalky M, walls of a room I stayed in that my mom might
have
(She hadn’t; she and my dad just passed through)
Along the road, western light. (Like in Wales. I lost some
of those photos too.)
And not only the photos, my concentrated memories,
But the love mitigated, or spiked, into likes
Ephemeral comments that I thought would be saved forever
Things I saw and did that I let fly by
That I didn’t have to remember because I could revisit
I should have put them all in poems.
Love. Yes maybe poems ... though those get deleted (or burned!) too! <3
ReplyDeleteselfie monogram" = !!!
yeah, true-- and ripped up! That selfie monogram image comes out of thinking with you & Caolan esp! I think my next runapowrimo is going to be about that by the way...
ReplyDeletethis is incredible. and sad! this comment is inadequate!!
ReplyDeleteI feel so belated, reading all of your poems from last week! But I love this visual, meditative, quiet, (sad) poem.
ReplyDelete