On the 2nd and 4th Friday of every month SuperForester Jordan “rediscovers” a literary gem from the vast treasure trove of an art form that, in our technological age, has become largely under-appreciated and “lost”.
I found today’s poem on the wonderful treasure trove that is dorothyprizes.org. If you love poetry and haven’t yet visited this site which I’ve profiled before, go there and drink deeply from the spring of lyrical wordsmithing. And if inspired, craft and submit your own work for prizes and publication next year.
Poems can be many things, and what I love about this one is its story. What it reveals through the details of its imagery and what it says in the silence between moments, between words. This could be your life or mine, a defining moment preserved like amber, transcended to myth by the power of words.
Finding the Handwriting of a Woman I Loved in a Paperback She Left Behind Years Age
It must’ve been our last summer together
when we drank beers on the roof of our two-bedroom
and took the first commuter train
to the Greater Boston Family Planning Center.
The green fluorescents made our faces flicker.
Slumped in a chair, she leaned on my chest and said
“I’m going,” and fainted, grinding her teeth.
I didn’t know what to do so I stroked her shoulder
as a nurse cracked a capsule of smelling salts.
Next day, the forecast called for rain.
We drove north up 1A to Plum Island
and walked the dunes marked Keep Off Dunes
to flush out piping plovers from the beach grass
because she said she wanted to see
something endangered before it disappeared.
We stayed on the shore and watched the storm
drag in off the Merrimac, and dropped to the sand
when lightning struck the spit off Little Neck,
clinging to each other as the squall drenched us,
the tide frothing closer up the beach,
the lighthouse staring seaward with its one good eye.
by Brian Brodeur of Fairfax, Virginia
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