It suited you to walk the beach in autumn;
our friendship should not finish – you’d decided –
in the bright ebullience of a summer’s day.
You knew you’d find a better moment
in the clustering shadows of an October afternoon
so you waited patiently and drew us both
to walk, instead, the cool blue edges of an autumn shore
where the rippling light of a full moon
broke in pale lines along the unravelling waves.
I watched the sea melt and darken to the sky,
not understanding that as we left the beach that night
our friendship would remain, derelict, behind.
It is a sad thing, this drawing down of friendship;
and sadder still, to choose a time to end.
But autumn is a time for emptying and for letting go
And autumn was when I lost my friend.
The tone of this poem is spot on. Good work here.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the tone!
Your descriptive powers are so very, well, poetical, that all your poems are lovely to read and listen to in my head.
Living in California, I appreciate the sense of season in your work. You capture Autumn in its many meanings here.
You leave me intensely curious about this friendship, how it could be terminated so abruptly and without rancor in such a simple way. How considerate this soon to be ex friend is, and how surprising that it would end.
Your comments, as always, give me plenty of food for thought, Paul. The older I get, the more I realise that the 24 hour timescale we impose on ourselves is not really the way to go. I prefer the seasonal changes – and autumn has always been a transitional time for me. I cannot ignore the incredible symmetry of losing a season and a friendship at the same time.
“…the rippling light of a full moon
broke in pale lines along the unravelling waves”
These lines sing! I marvel and even revel in the fluency, the sharpness, and the lyric expertise, of your poems.
You are so kind! I am – as most writers are – a terrible critic of my own work. I write to try to capture meaning – or to explain a moment or an emotion – yet I often feel that the tools I apply to this task are blunt and awkward. It’s truly kind of you to give me such positive feedback – thank you!