I recently received an invitation to the forty-year reunion of my high school class.


Snoqualmie

This mossy cliff, these cataracts and mist,
The uninvited flashes of a past I'd rather
Keep inside that woman's box, appear to be
Too close to me as Sergei's car comes down
The mountain, as the never-ending rain
Reminds me why I only rarely leave
The sunny plains for here, the home I had,
But didn't want. The giant trees and
Darkness haunt me. Failures of so many
Sorts appear again, and, here I am where
I grew up, in some god-awful Levitt house
With vinyl floors, and vinyl chairs, and
Something indescribable inside, inside
The little rooms, a sense that I was
Suffocating, which I was. I may as well
Admit I died, so, now, interred in Sergei's
Car, and out upon the prairie underneath
A larger, healing sky, I still am dead. I
Cannot rise, and mossy cliffs, and frantic
Motion, uninvited indications that I
Won't return to life, as everyone says
Jesus did, are eating me, as acid does.
I wish I hadn't come.



Poetry by Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
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Written on 2011-02-05 at 11:54

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