Loss of a Friend

Dear Readers,
This has been a good poetry weekend for me! Sheesh! I'm having to revise a bunch of poems (and write a few new ones) so you guys are totally reaping the benefits; that is to say, if you like reading my poetry. Anyway, this poem started out as a "Nonsense" poem (like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky). I tried really, REALLY hard to make it nonsense, but it wasn't really. Dr. Willis told me "Maybe you're just not meant to write nonsense". And I think he's right. So I completely revised it, added on a couple stanzas and made it into a coherent poem. And again, this one isn't about an actual event at all! I just bought daffodils today for our house, so that's where that image comes from, but the rest is completely made up. Let me know what you all think!

Loss of a Friend

I plucked from the ashes of this
slow burn of a friendship the tattered
remains of bubblegum wrappers - plastic
lace like a lady’s gloves, fitted tight
around diamond rings, like the diamonds
your mother used to wear. They sparkled
at the parties with champagne and strawberries.

Those summer nights we hid beneath
the stars, tucked away between the arms
of weeping willows. That place was
filled with honeyed air and your blue
eyes, the blue that you find beneath
stones at the beach and, if you’re lucky,
in the frozen center of a peach pit
just pulled from the refrigerator.

Then we woke, opened our eyes to find
the cold dawn rising from its bed. We
rose too - but now the grass stained our shorts
and your blue eyes turned black as the back
of your mothers hand ran across your face
like it was slapping all of me out of you.

Your red-brick house never looked the same
to me. And sometimes, when I’m out picking
daffodils among the fields across the river,
I’ll pluck from our time together the hard edge
of a dirty rock and throw it as hard as I can.