Found Poetry

As  a result of sorting out my piles, I have found a bunch of my old poetry.  Most of it is really bad, and should stay in the drawer.

I wrote a lot of poetry as a teenager, trying to find my voice, and wondering who might hear mine.  Even as an eight year-old I wrote of black roses and thunderstorms and violins at midnight.  Getting older didn’t mean I was any less maudlin.  But I did begin to write about people.

OK, make that one person.  Someone I had yet to meet, someone who I thought of and wished well every day.  Someone who I hoped would not move away or meet someone else before we met.  Most of my poems were letters.  To one person.  As Phoebe from Friends liked to say, ‘He’s her Lobster.’  And I admit, I was writing to mine, wondering when he would show up.

And I’m not just saying this, but I was writing to Sarge.  Reading my writing from back then, it’s very us.  Like I really did know him before we met.  I asked him to keep me in books and stay til the end of the movie.  I asked him to make me laugh, trace my scars and to know what my face means when I mean it.  I asked him to love old movies and love me because I’m a sap.

I was going through one of my many ‘keepsake boxes’ and crumpled up under the tickets and programs, I found this:

Speculative Poetry (that’s the real title there)

Lots of things

I want to do

All the while

Waiting for you

Someone who is

More like me

But different enough

So we’ll have well-adjusted kids

Someday

Sarge asked what I’d found, and I said, ‘I found you.’

Speculation over.