Gray Cat In the Paperbacks

 

At the most unexpected time

on the most unlikely of days

I met someone who couldn't stay, 

and yet stayed forever.

I wasn't then who I am now

which is both a good and a sad thing.

I didn't really love the one who gave me a ring

but meant well by them.

No poetry, on paper or in my heart

but I had one regret and so made a wish

to know the real thing with someone, only that and only this.

I knew the weight of asking.

I had asked to know peaceful days

before I grew old, and was given them.

I asked for sobriety and the craving was gone as if it had never been.

Still, out of the blue, out of left field...

I saw green eyes and they saw mine

just walking by at the end of an ordinary day.

Imagine someone feeling the same way; hit by lightning, swept away

from the next morning, for one glorious day.

Would you believe in a love at first sight?

Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time.

Two people utterly bowled over--one day to remember forever--mine.

Talk about the luck of the Irish.

Would I walk away from it again?

Would I be so rulebound? Was I right to head back home?

It doesn't matter now. I'm okay the rest of the way alone. 

I have that day, and the card you sent

to keep and remember what an answered prayer meant.

_________

for What's Going On?: Keepsakes and Treasure Chests (newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com)

(Blogger isn't letting me do links normally, lately.) 

Image at top is the card mentioned in the poem. I've kept it for 27 years. The gray cat is because I told them about a poem I had read in which a gray cat is a symbol for randomness and kismet. The poem was "untitled" by Carl Rickert. I would link to it but have never found it anywhere except in the magazine where I first read it. 

Music: Holly Cole I've Just Seen A Face  (If the Beatles object to me quoting Help From My Friends in this poem, I place myself at their mercy. I'd kill me if I were them!)

Dear November

 

Dear November,

It's mad easy to become lost.

You are so cold and distant, part of me is begging,

the rest of me a raised fist, cocked.

 

Everything inside me is in rivulets down a window

and it's moving,

dear November,

like a scared hare in the stalky brown fields. 

Dear November,

I think I married you once, had your child,

or came to your funeral every year wearing heartbroken black.

I was your dove, dear November,

and your crow.

Dear November,

I need to know that you remember me beautiful,

even if I turned dry as a page,

stale as a bowl of potpourri in a haunted house.

I am crying now, dear November

and December's smile mocks us both,

Cher Novembre,

mon triste bien-aime.*

________

*Dear November, my sad beloved

for Dverse Poetics for the love of letters.