Poems for Marnie

Memory To A Lover

People give you these moments sometimes when you see great things in them.
A gang of us were sitting around the park, talking bullshit about politics, current events, etc.
One girl said something about all that being secondary, that what really matters is those people you meet in life that share those views, the ones you can relate to on a real and instinctual level, and how you treat them. I remember thinking: This is a young lady wise beyond her years.
We ended up having quite a love together, she and I; until she told me I was worthless, and would never grow up.
I never believed a word of this, knowing that women sometimes will say these things to insure that they are not the ones to get hurt. Moreover, who is to say that one path of evolving oneself is any better than another.
What use to you is all the stuff, or even the knowledge you have acquired, if you fail in your convictions?
Most likely your children will inherit the same traits you exhibited so intensely in your youth.
You may find that the things you tell yourself you have done for their sake, make you more of a disappointment to them than you could ever be to yourself, or anyone else.

Eternal Youth

The nights we ran together, wild as your jasmine hair
you told me you were old as the Earth.
This is to remind you;
You are also as young, and as timeless.

An Old Shortcut

Walking up Grand, cutting through
that little strip of a park
we used to play in when we were kids
Two lanes of closely set, ancient sycamores
tucked in tight behind the
SUPER GRAND BUFFET
their mottled trunks appear to
an observer shabby, as if hiding
a row of squalid houses, but
they insulate the long strand of green
that holds a wealth of memory for me
I paused there to remember and found
where you had carved our names in one
of those massive shedding sentinels
right down at the bottom
near the tree's tangled root
one summer day in the instinctual spontaneity of youth.