Stephen and I were cleaning out our bookshelves this weekend, and I stumbled upon a couple notebooks full of poems I'd written, from junior high through college. So much of the verse was solemn and dark, but I that's what I'd needed to express in those days, when melancholy fit well and felt good. Here is one I wanted to share with you.
April 9, 1999
How hard is hard?
Squeezed eyelids thick with sea-salt
Some that splashed to the cement
Some that still melts in the corner of your mouth
--Lips hot with firecracker feelings
(Like the words you wanted)
Good thing you were all locked up.
Good things that used to go forth and multiply
In the nighttime now are lost
In the morning will be left
Fragile, trembling
Hidden among the flowers
--Dead blooms stuck in frozen puddles
On the sea-salt-stained cement.
Date | Events | Location |
---|---|---|
2/10 | swim meet | Brighton |
2/17 | swim meet | Grand Haven |
3/2 | swim meet | West Bloomfield |
3/16 | swim meet | Milford |
3/30 | YMCA Indoor Tri | Ann Arbor |
4/5 | 10k | Martian Meteor |
4/18 - 4/20 | 1650 free, 1000 free, 500 free, 200 free, 100 free, 200 IM, 100 IM |
State meet @ EMU |
5/4 | 10k | Burns Park Run |
6/1 | Half Mary | Dexter/A2 |
6/8 | Sprint | A2 Tri |
7/13 | Sprint | Waterloo |
8/2 | Half IM | Steelhead |