Never the one you think
Never the one that should.
Never the right time
Or enough time.
Never again the sweet lull
of the day-to-day.
No more easy solace
Or just passing time.
Gone the open-ended chat
The breezy how are you
The unburdened goodbye.
Never again
The unbridled laughter
The unaffected innocence
The making sense.
Never again the sweet lull
of the day-to-day.
it was easy.
our worries were
trifles.
divisions of labor
who did more.
she didn’t really, did she?
how could they?
before
we were cruel.
judgments came swift and brutal.
withholding likes and retweets
the kind word for one small and mean.
before we were cavalier
we knew nothing.
but we can learn.
now we will learn
it was easy
before.
My gums are bleeding again.
There’s a stack of papers that need attention
But I can’t find my glasses.
My truck is making that funny noise.
I sleep too late
Because no one wakes me.
I don’t write
I feel it’s all been said.
Your point’s been made:
I am selfish and fickle.
Say whatever you like.
Come home.
The sun was hotter.
You can tell.
Look at us squinting against it in photos then.
Everything washed out by the glare,
cheekbones, jawlines,
all detail surrendered.
Dazzled,
we could be anybody.
The gardens, look,
they’re parched.
It hurt to walk on the grass.
We lay in scorched backyards
slathering butter on our chests,
chain-smoking, eating fluorescent cheesies,
swilling bright red soda.
Everyone burned raw.
Everyone looked deliriously happy.
We knew
nothing could go wrong.
Our lives lay ahead of us.
Men were above us,
landing on the moon.
(goodreads.com contest winner).
Among da Vinci’s countless notebooks, all written in code,
or backwards, to ward off thieves,
is found a jotting that translates to:
“Tell me if I ever did a thing.”
Hardest on himself,
his abandoned projects haunted him,
and those completed offer little solace:
scissors, the parachute, a clock with a minute hand,
the helicopter,
the first contact lens.
An upstart, he sketched Mona Lisa, no doubt, just to keep us guessing.
Her lips alone took him 10 years.
Voracious curiosity fuelled him,
climbing a mountain outside of Milan to understand
why the sky was blue.
dissecting human cadavers to perfect his anatomical drawings and,
it is rumored,
lions!
When he was commissioned to paint the Last Supper
he reluctantly put aside a joke book he was writing,
and throughout his life was convinced that if only we had wings
we could fly like birds.
Imagine this man’s to-do lists:
“Have Avichenna’s work on useful inventions translated.”
“Buy mustard.”
“Get a skull.”
If it’s true
as grim neurologists now claim,
that our memory is far from intact,
that the very process by which we retrieve the past
is flawed, random, that it plays fast and loose with
fact, detail, even
colour. Then how exactly do I conjure
what was us.
If it’s all up for grabs,
all bets off,
what was true?
The way you looked at me that evening
on the boardwalk,
was it as tender as I picture it now?
And your kiss. As deeply felt?
Did you profess your love in three languages
or was it just two?
Before you round the corner do you actually
turn to look at me
one last time?
Are you in the blue shirt
or the red?
Are those actual tears?
But science falls short. It overlooks
the power of the human heart
which has a memory all its own,
where the moments of our lives never alter,
fade
or grow old.
Where a look remains as tender
as when first it was delivered,
a heart quickens just as it once did.
Yearning as fervent,
passion as acute,
and in that special place
the moments worth remembering
lie in wait for us, inviolate,
undefiled by time
or synapse.
The day-to-day momentum
carries us with it,
making it impossible to imagine
this all shall pass.
Too much to think this will end,
carrying us into oblivion alongside
all of our carefully honed plans,
our exquisite attention to detail.
Who can contemplate that one day
and not so very far away,
another, perhaps even a stranger,
will be charged to sift through our lives,
tossing into random piles
our old day timers, nail polishes
and favorite sunglasses,
expired library cards.
Who can comprehend that one day
Some distant cousin may glance
at a dog-eared photograph
of a laughing, red-haired woman,
and ask with fleeting interest
to no one in particular:
“Wasn’t she a writer?”
Fleming left his dirty dishes in the sink and found penicillin.
Modern medicine was never the same.
The inventor of Coca Cola just wanted to cure headaches.
Velcro,
because a dog owner scrutinized
the tenacious burrs
embedded in his retriever’s coat.
The most profound discoveries
are pure accident.
Go looking for one thing and find another,
Maybe better.
On my way to a purebred prize winner
A mongrel butted in.
Best dog ever.
I thought the invitation said Thursday.
And found you.
Leave room for error.
Cast off loosely.
Await the entirely unexpected,
The astonishingly,
The utterly new.
Always be a poet. Even in prose.
— Charles Baudelaire.
In essence I am a storyteller who writes poems. Put simply, I write the poems I want to read.[…]
A sequence of my poems has been published in a hardcover book entitled The Music of Leaving Poems by Tricia McCallum
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