Forgotten

Like lips from long ago.

I want to claim it was a different life.
But I cannot.
Granted, that was then
And this is now,

Yet it is the same life;
I am the same person, older,
Still young with
Life. Lips from so long ago.

I can remember one
August afternoon:
My lips
Wanted to touch yours for eternity.

I threw myself onto the roof of your car
And wouldn’t let you go, kissing you
As you drove, foot on the brake,
Down the drive.

I think about your lips
And for some reason my eyes moisten.
It is because I think about what I
Lost, like a September cloud over the Sound:

Beautiful and full and not really mine
But belonging only to the sky.
Not waiting for anyone.
It is there, hanging as a bubble

In the bright sky, tugging toward
The far beaches of speckled islands,
Dreaming of forgotten Atlantis,
That I feel the loss and grasp

Only the memory as it escapes to catch
The cloud. There’s no holding on.
There is only the memory
And the forgotten touch.

Like your lips from so long ago.




Copyright 2002 by Peter A. Stinson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry 360 with permission of the author.