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For Nancy (who will understand)

Tonight when it was over,
I went quickly to the wall behind the chapel,
and watched the last frayed borders of the sunset
slide, mauve-grey from the edges of the sky.

I have not put my pen to poetry in months;
odd, recalling sun splashed afternoons when you and I
sat here and filled plain spiral notebooks with images.

For you the world was porch swings filled with stars,
long fingered clowns, and the sound of the merry-go-round

by the boardwalk.
And I wrote about my brother's faded flannel shirts,
the way whole wheat bread smells baking, and stained glass shatter-

ed all around my feet.

For four years we chased elusive images on warm May afternoons
like this one when summer seeps in, turquoise and molten gold.
We tried to pin each moment, like a struggling yellow butterfly,
to blue lined paper. And we never quite suceeded.

Nancy, I have learned that it is best,
when I let time slip quick-silver through my fingers.
I can never capture exactly what I want : a kiss in the gazebo,
the Ocean City boardwalk, the total charm of lilacs.

And to try is madness.
You too, have seen the poets,
breastless women swathed in black,
men in dirty embroidered shirts and cowboy hats,
all reading the same poem in the same musicless voice,
lost in a marijuana haze of lies and time and death.

And I have had enough of poetry and poets and all the bright
young suicides.

Yet Nancy, even as I sit watching stars
push through the fluid fabric of the night.
I promise you that I will never be quite free.
Rushing about amid sunday dinners and psychological conventions,
awake until three A.M. with children I'm still not sure I want,
the images will float in, and collect in small mad pools
along my minds outter edges until they overflow once more.

Ann Hackman

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