November 16, 2002
Erika, do you remember Kerrville?
How we stifled our shivers all night,
each of us thinking the other
was able to sleep? Dawn came like
ink being rinsed from a rag; slowly
the sky grew gray
and in those quiet pearly
moments I rustled out of the
tent to find more firewood.
You must have finally drifted off
and while you dozed
I worked to coax the embers
back to life
The too-solid earth
trickling nearby stream
and woods thick with decaying
leaf and autumn spice meant nothing.
Fire: the whole world, our floor and mooring.
Warmth: our greatest hunger and satisfaction.
You pushed open the tent flap and
stepped into morning
as I put some water on to boil.
You shook your feet,
stretched and turned
in front of the fire’s blossoming
blaze. You held your hands up,
fingers splayed, over the flames.
.
I remember that night in November
Erika, do you remember Kerrville?
How we stifled our shivers all night,
the both of us thinking the other
was able to sleep?
The dawn came like
ink being rinsed from a rag; slowly
the sky grew gray
and in the quiet pearly
hours I rustled out of the
tent to find more firewood.
I had never before been so glad
to be able to move.
Hello, and welcome to the only officially finished poem currently on my blog! :) I really like this one; I think it’s especially fun to look at where it started and where it ended up.
As with most of my poems that work, this is completely autobiographical. My senior year of college, one of my best friends and I hit an odd spot in our friendship… lots of misunderstanding on both sides, so we went camping, because obviously that solves everything. ;)
Somehow, it did.
I did very little work on this one today—most of it was done over the last year. It was a relief to realize I had an easy edit today. For the first time this month I really didn’t want to work on a poem.
I thought it was a lovely start then, and it absolutely blows me away now. well done, miss!