Our Separation

At the moment

When all I knew was turned

Into a dragon

And I fell hopeless

In the field of thorns

I felt as if I was an Italian mother

Waving goodbye to her eldest son,

Or that woman who mailed letters

For seventeen years

To "the boy with the leather jacket".

 

What could I say?

To think of all these years

Leading up to a few

Brief, compact moments.

To think of the moments

Like small cherry blossoms

Fallen into a small pool of water

Left as soggy drifters

Clinging to one and other.

 

It was an awful sadness

Him leaving me-

Two images floated into

My line of focus:

Rodin's statue, The Kiss;

And that amazing end of a book

When the boy

With the brown leather jacket

 

Did show up,

With those bags filled with letters

And announced that he

Had arrived.

 

I might admit

That I have dreamed of this moment,

And thought that I would

Climb in my car

Puff a cigarette

With red, silly lips

And drive off with my hair

Flying all over the place.

 

But no one could see themselves clearly

Turning into one of those fossil collections

Balanced on strings

With the small square blocks

Saying this was a dinosaur

Once long ago.