Solitude

Kate Bergen


The sky was narcissistic pink.
Warm venal blood and salt-water tears
running thickly down the horizon,
consuming the disinterested hills
of winter-wood horizons and the
blue vein of the Hudson.
You were tattooed on my heart,
your name carved in flower-rings
branded in the tear-bath of love.
The water shimmered, refracting light
back at the blind eye of the sun,
and morning pulsed like a slowly defective heart
tired of beating for you.
You didn't think I'd remember
the way your words forced entry into my mind
and your touch into my dreams.
Too much daylight rapes the sky,
and you were the bright light
to burn too soon in vain.
One day, in the flow of snow-white morning,
thick with the syrup of pine-sap and regret
seeping through your window panes,
you'll breathe the vapors of solitude
and feel like this too.

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The 2River View, 2_3 (Spring 1998)