Friday, August 19, 2011

My Poetry Year: Entry #64

In which Your Humble Blogger laments the fact that many of her closer friends live more than seven hundred miles away (cue violins in the background):

"Returning to Tucson to Visit a Friend"

It takes three buses to get to your house,
Each one following a route that I know
By grids in my veins. But the roads are split
And suffering now, and the buses' wheels
Travel over them in uneven time,
A stuttering rhythm matched in my chest.
Forgive me. For all the miles and the months,
For the sad few messages I managed,
And those sent along broken postal roads
Or long-laid cables. Forgive me. I have
Only human maps by which to find you.

* * *

This is mostly imagination, though I still remember the bus routes I need to travel to get around. I actually didn't get to return to Tucson -- where I lived from 2003 to 2007 -- for a visit during my poetry year, and I think that fact was weighing heavily on me by the end of it, heavily enough for me to imagine that I had made the trip, or was making the trip, and was able to see friends, especially those with whom communication had lapsed a bit. Another poem written according to syllables, this is the last piece that I put any real effort into for 2010.

(For Reuben, 2010-2011)

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