New Song Training

I am losing

Parts of us,

By mistake? Or somehow choosing

To open-handed release my you: no fuss only wonder at the weight remaining.

The touch/taste/smell and sigh of we

Has seeped inside these walls and beams

Darts out of sight too quick for me to see

Leaving the timbre of your voice, it seems

Just out of reach despite my heart’s determined straining.

I don’t know when you last laughed

What warmed your heart

Or left you cold adrift upon a raft

Of longing, needing touch to jump start

And renew that vitality seeping, weeping, draining.

Can I call to you with music? Which song

Will guide you to me across space and time?

Will you hear me? Has it been so long

Since we wove ourselves together, knit with rhyme

Flying sure into eternity, towards forever aiming.

When did you last the sweet chords strum?

What chorus, bridge, and melody

Did you sing to me to coax me come

Into your arms? All I know is you: now far from me

As I dust your guitar, the strings thrum reproachfully complaining.

Did I not love enough, or not so well

That your spirit/body suffered life and left

Now I remain, and silent strings refuse to tell

Me of love with the notes you coaxed. I am bereft

As I breathe across the strings and dream the notes, tears blur, the music staining.

-

This poem is an entry into Mackenzie Davi’s latest ekphrastic challenge. I was assigned the image heading this poem to inspire a story or poem of my choice.

You can see the other entrants and read more about the challenge here: