3 POEMS: LOVE FOUND, LOVE LOST

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Submitted Date 04/16/2019
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-- This is one poem, in an autobiographical series of poems, I posted here at WriteSpike. Go to my stories section for others. They are in chronological order. --

Charles River Boston

Stolen Moments
Age 17, On the Embankment of the Charles River, Boston, early May 1962
Memories of my first true girlfriend. A stolen moment on a Saturday away from our schools in Boston one spring afternoon.

next to the highway
we spread
the blanket
on the sloping grass
above the river

you pull me gently
to your lips -

I am lost
and found

(cars who see us
honk their horns)

-----------------------------------------------

Love Hurts
Age 17, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter NH, 1962

In bed
back
at
school
sudden pain
wakes me up --
my arms are aching
to hold her still

NOTE: I, of course, knew the expression "my arms are aching for you," but at this moment my arms actually hurt feeling her absence.

-----------------------------------------------

The Divided Highway
Age 18, the first weeks of summer vacation, Sandwich, Massachusetts
Route 6, Mid-Cape Highway at night, 1963
My girlfriend was spending the weekend at my family's home. In 1963 there were no highway lights and very little traffic on the Mid-Cape in the early hours of the morning.

We sat in the middle of the highway at 2 AM
on the grassy divide between the four lanes

Lying on our blanket,
the sky was dark as a cave
the stars growing brighter

Until the aura of a
lone approaching car
spread like a dark fog
then brightly lit
the top of a tree
and finally a bush
before it crested the hill
and its headlights broke the darkness
with a light so brazen
we had to look away
until it brushed by us --
unaware of the show
it had just put on

You sat there
for an hour
loved what I had shown you
this passage
from dark to light

Kissed me

Just a week before
I had imagined a summer together,
the first in our long distance romance

But now there was something
that you could not say
you said you needed to be alone
which was odd after years
of wanting to be together

Since we had only kissed I knew
it was nothing we had done together

In the morning you left
were gone
without a word

After months
in the fall
you phoned
"It was my fault," you said
"I was a fool...
Please, I want you back"

But then it was too late...

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