Second Guessing and Looking Back

Second Guessing and Looking Back

It was really clear
it was of the utmost plain.
The development is shady
tears almost always remain.
Of this skinny girl
who has come back so disengaged.
In transformation
in transfiguration.
An existentialist poet in 1976
an Episcopalian little girl now.

Lots of people will see that
and not understand
but you see you and her
are so strangely alike.
It's all a matter of metaphor
rhetoric and simile.

The sadness of her husband
and her hopes of the afterworld
the salvation of ghosts.

The cold was very bitter
my lips and fingers
feeling small pains.
The boy's on the wire
and she doesn't like carpet stains.

You're so irreproachable
Where do you really live, Angie?
Are you in Athens
or have you changed out
into something other
much other
than what I remember about you?

You might think I'm joking
and not understand
but not really.
I don't mean comparisons literally
you were so beautiful
and gentle kind and pure.
No longer had a husband
you were feeling free and strange
I was just plain constrained.

I can imagine you washing dishes
and I know your husband Skip
I should come to see you
sometime up in Athens
because things are opening up
and things seem okay now.
You are now married
which I forgot about.
An existentialist woman in 1976
a waitress in Athens in 1981.

That may not be the exact
but rather a hindsight assimilation
inside of my head
like all the others.
All a matter of metaphor
rhetoric and simile.
You are so modern in your life
a refurbished apartment
cocaine and Jackson Browne.

The Winter air was clear
my heart was in pain
I grabbed hold to a tree
tears almost always remain.

You left me that time
thought it was right to disappear.
I thought it was cruel
but couldn't believe
that it was true.
It was all a matter
of acute embarrassment
and I just had to go away.

Several other people
they didn't understand it.
Now it seems the years
are piling up.

You were so beautiful
gentle kind and pure
and I suspect you are still so.
But I understand with clearness
the crunched groundsmen.

-Will Dockery (August 1981)