Film of water on sidewalks
this morning was still
though drops are falling
in the heat thickend air.
You are a poem I wanted
to write without the word I.
I couldn’t do it, so now
I am running, feet falling
in puddles to break this
silence; with each shoe fall,
the world hears our name, you
and I, and you. It’s always
full circle. I start at my front
door, and even the cars passing
are silent, the sun rises silently as I run
away from home, into the circus
that is you circling in my mind.
I think about the trees, rocks,
water falling in fat crystal droplets
from powerlines, but the poem of you
without an I keeps coming back
into focus. When I run, I run away
from my house and to a trail full
of other people and ducks, rabbits and mud.
I run away and it feels like I’ll never
come back, I’ll never be done, until I turn around
and return. Coming back is just like leaving
in reverse. And I am coming back
to the poem of I with no you in it.
5 Comments
July 22, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I love the feel of this, the quietness and the running…and the phrase “you are a poem I wanted to write”, not sure I’m getting the “without the word I” part though. All the you’s and I’s have me a little confused on what’s what. But I like how it came across when I just read the first part of the phrase. It seems to symbolize a lot, at least for me, just thinking of how intimate and personal it is for a poet to choose to write about someone and I like the idea of this poem you can or cannot write being a metaphor for the success of the relationship, if that makes sense.
July 22, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I like this too. And I think “the poem of you
without an I” is a lovely, sad phrase. And then to have it flipped at the end into “the poem of I with no you in it” is just wonderful. Very much full circle like the poem says.
Did you enjoy your damp run this morning?
July 22, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I’ll take your comments into consideration when drafting. I often talk about words themselves too much in my first drafts, prob because words tend to be the most important things to me.
And thank you Emily.
I did enjoy my run. I ran all the hills extra times just to be sure I got enough in. Mandy was wanting to go slow, though. Arrgh.
July 23, 2008 at 10:19 pm
i love this. as a runner who’s been out of it for a while and struggling to get back in, it’s inspiration. (it’s inspiration as a poet, too.)
July 25, 2008 at 11:05 am
Your poem is refreshing! I understand the part of “without the I,” a kind of fleeing from anego-centered life. It’s also a stylistic change a writer would like to make. The narrator has let the reader into the back door of the poem.
I see the narrator as running from a relationship, at least for the moment. The you could be another person, or it could refer to another aspect of the narrator.
But a circle is formed, a container for the narrator’s life.
Makes me want to go on a run too!