Poems Past

Going through my papers, here, I’ve once again come across a notebook with loose sheets of all sorts—poetry from the 60′s and 70′s that I’ve put aside for one reason or another. Some published, long ago, but mostly not. I’ve never been much for submitting poems or short stories. Only essays that were published on-line at Moondance and some in paper publications, and those were much later—within the past 20 years.

I put my name and address at the top of some of the typewritten sheets. An apartment dweller until my marriage in the 90s, the address helps in pinning down when a piece was written and what my circumstances might have been at the time. Some…most of the poems were written in my journal (lately called, thanks to The Artist’s Way, "Morning Pages"). When I came to the end of a journal, I saved the pages with poems and essays, and the makings for the same, and shredded the rest. A habit born of having known too much about the wrong things and the wrong people. Fortunately, my having a "roll-up" memory, none of that remains to burden me.

Anyway, I’ve chosen two of my poems to share in this post, both written on March 13, 1977.


Echoes of Mind

Vision clouded, noise drifts in
to fill my picture of the world
The drinks I’ve had don’t isolate,
but merely shift the focus to the sounds,
less easily avoided than the sights.

If I were sober, now,
I’d shut it out—that senseless murmuring.
But here I sit, inertia-bound
and listen vainly
for the echoes of my mind.


I Do Not Live Alone

I do not live alone.
One by one come memories,
Purged by time,
Existing once again
In the perfection
Of what might have been.

One thought on “Poems Past