The Crying Game

Love and War

I have found it very difficult, of late, to write or even think, of much beyond the wars going on in West Asia and Ukraine, and the ongoing genocide which is not a war but an indelible stain on every living person. But I find some hope in the resistance to Israel and the US, and some solace from reading things that other people write that are not about the war. I’m glad they manage to do it even if I can’t see how they manage. Today I try to do the same thing.

The Morning After

You sighed and said you were asleep, that day,
while I still jittered with remembered thrill
of last night’s dance – could faintly feel you still
pressed tight against me in our rhythmic sway
that lasted... oh how relentless is time’s flight!
An instant only, or all night, a lifetime flies!
But now beneath the golden summer light
you stretched your weary limbs and closed your eyes.

And said you were asleep. You smiled, it seemed,
when I could lightly feel your fingertips
touch mine. And when at last my eager lips
found yours, you murmured sweetly that you dreamed.

Ah, was there ever such a day as this?
To know, to taste, the sweetness of your kiss!
And are we dreaming now, in slumber deep?
Or only now at last just waking from a sleep?

That day, the sun, our time and you!
The memory of a wedding dance‑‑
we lived, we loved and seized the chance
to make our wildest dreams come true.

These words were very nearly the last words I ever wrote, many years ago. I wrote them shortly before spinning out of control on a highway, spinning and sliding into oncoming traffic where a car t-boned, I think it’s called, me, hitting the passenger side of the car and crushing it all the way to the middle of the car. Another rotation and I’d have been pulped. If there had been a passenger they’d have been killed. If it had been a truck that hit me, well, you get the picture. No one was hurt, and I didn’t even get a ticket. My laptop was liquidated and the car totaled, leaving me in the middle of a distant state, but one of the witnesses to the accident happened to be going exactly where I wanted to go and offered me a ride. By the time I got to my destination I forgot even to mention the incident in a phone call to my new girlfriend (my forgetfulness perhaps aided by a sense that it would distress her to hear about it).

Whether I was spared by divine grace or dumb luck could be open to debate, but I will say this: having come so close (as I have many times), one emerges with a deep realization of the contingency of individual life and sometimes a sense of mission. If you have come close to death, I hope you can celebrate your life and continue to find and demonstrate its beauty. If killing a body annihilates a multitude, finding love opens as many doors. I have been the gateway to much that is beautiful.

On Light Reflecting from the Water  

I traveled past the town where lived a friend
not long ago. Just like a magic charm
the place awakened swirling thoughts of her
and how we saw a light upon a distant shore
and watched the light’s reflections follow us
as we slowly strolled together hand in hand,
or swam in the lake of that sweet summer’s dusk.
But mostly my thoughts turned to that wild night
and how she turned to me with startled eyes
and suddenly cried out at images unseen
– or not yet seen.

She threw herself into my arms, all lost.
That holy night we swam, immersed in love.
We’d say perhaps the years we spent
all led to that most passionate height,
and afterward a long decline and fall.
But is it so? We felt our protean love
completely then, the very instant we
were subtly torn apart and it began to fade.
So now against the years the moment stands
in sharp defile.

Our histories are receding lights – a trail
commencing in some darker corner of
a reminiscent mind that seems to lead
us to the place we’ve chosen as our own,
but ends reflecting only where we stand
today.