I don’t even think of you that often

Published on by Laura Bloomsbury

This far along the road
the cul-de-sac’s clearly signed
so there’s time now
for turning around, to track back
through the furrows memory has made
meeting many apparitions
dusty from the years

Not the keepsake ones
who drop by dreams and still fill
fantasies with a febrile pulse.
All those others though, lost and lapsed
with their pale, amorphous
‘remember me’ faces

I’ll puzzle a while
till the pieces should fall into a name
a time, an encounter

There! All the way back there.
From that perilous perch of puberty
he steps. A hopeless valentine
with his broken record, his cracked aria.
Eager, hangdog, dressed in pathos,
like an unsold toy

And now there’s no choice…
I am doomed to remember a boy
with a wrecked voice

For Punam’s Poetics prompt “Beginnings are endings” our poem finishes with one of her given opening lines from literature, as here with John Irving’s : “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. Title is the end line of Leonard’ Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel’.

22 thoughts on “I don’t even think of you that often”

  1. Beautiful use of the line!!! Well done. I especially like the idea of the cul-de-sac, having lived on such a street when I was growing up. As was pointed out to me….there’s only one way in and one way out in a cul de sac!

  3. A poignant poem sprung from an evocative opening line, Laura, and I love that you took the title from Leonard’ Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel’. I also love the ‘’furrows memories have made’ and the idea of filling ‘fantasies with a febrile pulse’.

  4. A small glimpse of the past in the mind becomes a riddle, and here you have answered it beautifully. I often wonder what makes those lost years and faces suddenly and seemingly inexplicably appear. (K)

  5. A beautifully written poem – so carefully remembering and describing your feelings as well as effortlessly using the last line – Jae

  6. Laura your poem has a quiet gravity to it – looking back when we realise there is more road behind than ahead. A standout for me is ‘Dressed in pathos’ a striking phrase that turns an emotion into a physical garment 🙌

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