Wet
Tuesday
Rain today like a worry
always at memory's edge.
I'm stuck inside, my luck
to wander from room to room,
pick up a book, read a few pages,
put it down & stare into the past,
sigh while rain washes our windows
like rain in a Hemingway story.
I read a page & the main character
drinks bourbon at the end of pain.
I immediately want a drink,
now, the middle of this wet day.
Something disturbing about these non-events.
Why am I reminded of a time
when I walked home along our road
& heard a distant rushing noise —
wind hurrying across the land toward me?
I stood quite still in the still air
thinking What's that? Then it rushed through,
fluttering leaves of high trees & my hair,
my skin, like a woman's caressing fingers,
before everything grew calm again.
I can't reason what's bothering me
but I'm jittery, a cat before a storm.
That much is certain. I check the time.
You'd better come home, break this spell.
Whatshername?
I've tried every trick: the alphabet,
Alice, Beverly, Colleen, Dorothy,
no luck there but some great old names,
Death Notices for inspiration,
an idea that weighs my heart with fate.
She was my teenaged girlfriend's workmate,
not a girl, a mature woman then,
ageing now, like my lost love, maybe worse.
Where did this memory spring from?
She's there like bad news, a woman
I didn't know for long, stalking, shameless.
I see her direct gaze as clearly
as dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight.
Her husband's name I remember.
All I knew about him was that she
cheated on him in a soft porn way.
She had approved of me until
my girlfriend & I broke up
& I remember pain, pain,
the sound of someone crying,
but also sweetness, the taste of love,
even in my girlfriend's lunch break.
As I search through feelings of loss
like searching, hungry, the labyrinths
of a dark city that lies under snow,
I wonder if anyone reaches out
to grasp my name before it's too late?
Alistair, Bernard, Christopher, David.
Copyright © 2002 Ian C. Smith