Puzzles

When the puzzle of

your broad back 

and narrow shoulders,

the sweetness

between your legs

as you push push 

so deliberately

when we were nineteen,

in the Connecticut woods

in your childhood bedroom

with the blue porcelain elephant

that your aunt gave you

has melted away

I often wonder how

it is that 

only a moment ago

we were 

there

 

 

Reviews

[Eilis]

When I was studying history, I was most fascinated by the ways that humans have approached the idea of the past and its meaning. The different methods and the reasoning. The arguments about whether it is linear, circular, cyclical. Some things about living cannot be disputed. Our personal experiences, I think, become labyrinthine. We grow and age but our inner iterations do not necessarily. Some stimuli can bring us back to a point where we are still that person we were at that moment and all those touch points can wash over us like they are still possible in that past-time. It is an interesting part of being human how the imagination gives us this parallel life where we can experience so many things only in mind. The past feels real and close when it isn’t and reconciling that duality seems impossible. But that’s not necessarily a negative thing—as your poem shows. I think having that ability to “return” makes it easier to give ourselves the grace and courage to keep going forward. This poem hits a nerve in my middle-aged mind where reflections of my younger days do feel quite immediate in spite of their distance.

[SkinlessFrank]

Yeah, it’s uncanny, that weird sense of sometimes being present in your past life. And you have put your finger on exactly the trick that time plays on our psyches—that sense of being disconnected from time’s arrow. Some physicists seem to argue that something they call “spacetime” can bend with gravity and that our limited human perception of a constant "now" is just an illusion.

[. serah .]

-- ohhhhh... -- the way you experience time and relay your impressions to your readers is always amazing... but this piece of poetry is especially precious... -- the intense proximity of some memories is as baffling as it is natural... -- i'm reminded (yet again) of some of my own memories which might have unravelled years ago but feel so close that it seems like they unravelled "only a moment ago"... -- amazing work... i can almost hear your voice...

[m.s.early]

Einstein was tight, time is relative. Great job penning that.

[Ed Hart]

i'm sitting here nodding yes and yes

[shultzfeather]

pow spectrum orientation

[Robin]

amazing the things one can remember in the blink of a memory ...

[Penlady]

...and they said we were too young to love.....

[bookworm]

Yes! Yes! Yes! You are so one of my favorites! Will you ever stop surprising us? I am speechless, mister....

[roarke]

the melange of moments.
the influence and inspiration is legion.
the peripheral glance
a trident stab
a culture scrape
an orgasmic exhale

yep, good stuff.

[Kenneth The Poet]

Awesome, the man with boundary-pushing pen has a soft side.

You are a master of the pen.