A Trilogy of Love and Loss
Carmine Dandrea
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse 2012 (view all the winners)
Third Prize
1.
The Time Passed By
Now that our summer's run its course
and winter's pressing hard,
will you still stay? Is there remorse
for what we've done:
defied the favors of the world,
marred sacred vows once taken,
received no easy tokens
of fevered friendships broken?
Say, now that all the years
have fled and fallen
and we with them are going,
can you regret the time passed by
with nothing other showing
than you and I with flowers entwined
and the bloom of love still growing?
2.
At The Summer Cottage
The barren beach in these November days
still holds our footsteps at the cottage door.
The summer mornings when the rising tide
had washed them clean are gone;
the dinghy, upside down upon the shore,
is like an ancient monument;
its keel, sharp and stark,
cuts through the cold November air;
and your delighted cries have flown
with beach birds south to where
the sands are warm, the waters cool and green;
my heart would break if it were otherwise.
I sit and watch the window steam with ocean spray
in the summer cottage salted down with winter wind
and listen to the seagull's sharp-beaked scream
cut through the air of this November day.
There in the corner on the salt-filled sill
where we had left them when the sun left us—
our treasures, dry and dusty now,
that as the tide went out
when last we kissed
were whelk and coral, conch and living sponge.
3.
Perpetual Motion
The minutes come, the minutes go
between the bread, between the blows,
among the crumbs left on the floor,
among the dishes grim with grime
and hardened from the day before.
And what is left of you and me
to say we occupied this house,
to show we lived and loved and left,
except the window's shattered pane,
except the wind come blowing in
on sun-filled days and nights of rain?
Where will it end, where will it end,
this constant gabble in the blood,
this favored seed that grows on through
between us two, me and you?
Ah, never is unheard of time,
and never is unbroken line,
and never ends the world wheeled on:
the seasons climb; the years peel down;
the sun and moon and clouds go by,
and every star that ever shined
keeps gliding through the silent sky.
The circles move; they ever move;
the darkened sky is welded blue.
The fire burns, the red sparks fly;
the flame dies down that ever grew
between us two, me and you;
but flint strikes on and iron too,
and so do we, both me and you,
from whirls of gases in the void
to spinning earths that come in view
of some Big Spinner with his string
who spins out me and spins out you.
