I should not tell you, but last night I dreamt of you.
Opening my eyes I found myself in a fog so thick
the grass and sky stitched together into one gray canvas.
I smelled clearly the ocean brine and the half-frozen earth.
There before me, I knew, the jagged cliff, its edge
the severed gap that bridged what was and what will never be
Just as sea sits at elbow of land, so death at the elbow of
memory, lapping at the edges of it, greedy, like all lonely things.
In the dream I had not met you yet, you see. I did not yet
know you to know the shape of your shoulders in the distance,
I could not recognize your bowed head, nor the color of your voice
as the wind brought it to me with fragments of your mournful song
that wove with the wind through the heather and broke
with the ocean against the rocks below. In my dream
I did not know you. But when you turned, I saw you
and I believed I might remember your name.
And then the fog cleared and I was alone.
And then I woke and I was alone.
This poem was originally published in the October issue of NER
Photo taken by me.
or, if you’d like, you can
This is beautiful in the way the oil sizzling in a stainless steel pan is. It makes you flinch and step away and then think. I love how all your content not only encourages thinking but also causes it.
Underrated skill tbh
> Just as sea sits at elbow of land, so death at the elbow of
memory, lapping at the edges of it, greedy, like all lonely things.
>...nor the color of your voice
> And then the fog cleared and I was alone.
And then I woke and I was alone.
The rhythm in this oof. Thank you for writing and posting.