i wonder if my love affair

with poetry is over

seminar ended, and despite honest intentions

marcy, colin, antoinette and nathaniel are drifting off

mrs and professor eliot promised

to have us over, over the summer, and they will, i'm sure

but it is over

and it feels like it is over

everything i learned

the meter, stanza forms, rhythms, all of it

the thousand poems consumed

the headiness of it

for what

for when, for why

so i can write this?

suddenly 

my private life feels private

and what terri and i are up to, our salty antics

seem

well

perhaps i was too quick to reveal too much

poetic thoughts

which filled my waking moments so recently

are nearly gone

and as i run

lines don't come as they did, but thoughts

of the nature of poetry itself

the act of communicating my line and verse

the why of it

the need of it

i think i know why emily dickinson 

sat in room and wrote 

and wrote and wrote

and wrote

i think i understand anne sexton's need 

to tell us everything

i have a sense 

of what elizabeth bishop was trying to convey

what i don't understand

is where the deep wells are filled

where the next step, from this, begins

i suspect i will never know

that this isn't my game, that the world of the mind

is too slippery for me

that i am better suited to mundane tasks in a mundane world

this isn't my swan song

i enjoy typing too much for that

i said, in the beginning, what is the point of writing

if it isn't fun

i've told some tales 

and it was fun

and this isn't about losing the muse

it is about losing the infatuation

i know me 

about as well as i know anyone

this feels like a down moment

terri is away

she may or may not come back

it could hardly be more reasonable that i'm feeling down

the first poem i wrote in september

was about this very thing

how this very thing wore her down, terri

terri has one mood, happy

and two modes of existence, asleep and awake

this subtle 

and not so subtle 

moodiness of mine escaped notice for a long time

she doesn't think this way

when she did notice, she didn't like it

i almost wish

that she won't come back

she deserves a happier dolphin, though i know

i know, i know, i know

she will never find a dolphin like me

that gave so much

and asked so little, but to be held

i wrote, in september

about our special 

our special way, the special thing we like to do that was ours alone

i won't find that again

she won't find that again

but there is more to it, life, than what we found we could do, and did

she needs to be happy

no

she is happy, she needs happy people around her

not so long ago

at spring break

i found and wrote about what i need

so

no matter what 

it will end well

because i love terri and i always will

but i also love a quiet girl who lives far away, and if i can't find her

i will find another

perfect in her own way, as each of us are perfect

in our own way

~

this feels unfinished, my thoughts

drifting on and on

leading nowhere

i am at odds, things have changed, as they are wont to do

~