Leaving
My thoughts are ghostly
like autumn wind
through fading leaves,
whispering
a reminder that the time has come
to cast away our summer skin
and become one year older.
I remember
That year we stood in changing light
on changing ground where we had grown;
from there we watched the curtain fall
upon our childhood.
We wanted to feel the last of it,
Then we wanted to make the feeling last;
We were adrift and clinging
to the bones we knew as children,
but we forgot to watch as they
had steadily grown longer.
So we tucked our shirts
and laced new shoes
and knew that this new skin
would stay a while.
The time had come to leave our mother;
still we had no direction.
And we forgot
that we left something behind then.
It was something like this:
You gave me an empty book
I didn’t understand
it was only a place to start
with no direction.
I had nothing to say
you didn’t understand
because you couldn’t read
without words.
You had the heart of a child
and you didn’t know me
and I couldn’t know
that I didn’t know you
for I didn’t know me
and I had only the heart of a child.
I gave you an empty book
You didn’t understand
You had nothing to say
I didn’t understand
because I couldn’t read without words.
Years later:
From here I see the city, half alive,
and half alive, we are but gnarled figures
stretched out on the snow.
But I can make it through the day,
And I will make it through the next one,
and soon I will have made it through
another winter.
(so it will be until I have grown old.)
There is a child playing in the snow
who doesn't know how soon he will be older,
and his laughter will no longer be
the laughter of a child.
I am ghostly,
with the heart of a child
left beating in the summer skin
that I once left behind.