Walking

This is just a second draft…

 

We go walking and it startles me

how the memories I hold vivid

hot and sweet and full of pride,

crushed close to my heart are scattered

in your mind

 

I wonder if they have simply fallen by the way

like these crumbling chalk paths,

eaten by time

or been torn violently down

in your recent storms

 

These paths we walk in the summer sun

they strike something in me

some half known truth, a knowingness.

Paths that have fallen, end in midair

Gulls creeling where my smaller feet once trod

 

The places of my childhood, owned and claimed

victorious discoveries

perhaps no longer existing

perhaps unreachable, the way forever closed

 

I try to tell you this epiphany

and as often you grasp the meaning beyond my clumsy words.

‘That same river-twice stuff’ you say

Choices made, doors closed

 

I imagine part of me still there

wild and free, in the cool forest air

or tasting the salt spray on the breeze

new life in the loam scenting my every breath

 

Does she know or care the path home is lost, crumbled away

labelled now a hazard, others barred from entry

Irrationally I want to leave the path, find her

to see if we would recognize ourselves in each other

 

Frustrated by all the paths I used to know so well

all surprising me by ending in sky

I take a new path, and, as so often when we used to walk,

I end up with wet feet

 

On the way home I walk the edge of where the ocean meets the sand,

and I’m quoting, but there is some comfort in that