There was Eva first
the giggly girl with long, straight hair
and freckles
The impish grin erased
in a flash, across the hood of a car
on the last day of summer vacation
Eyes of china blue gone glassy
in the August sun
The driver never saw you
Still I wonder
Who would you have been?
Mindy
Mousy Mindy, the quiet girl
Hair of gold and eyes of grey
dark circles under your eyes
because you couldn’t sleep
All the weight of shame, disgrace
with only that inner voice to counsel
You dropped your weight at the end of a rope
Your mother found your lifeless body
Still I wonder
Who would you have been?
And Jay
The prankster, the merrymaker
ever full of mirth
I still visit the place
where waters whisper your laughter
across the shoals, not fifty yards
from where you last parked
Still I wonder
Who would you have been?
Still I wonder
Who am I?
Nicely written, my friend.
LikeLike
Thank you Neil. This one is very personal to me. It’s been festering in me a long time and then poured out in an instant. I knew each one of those kids, that’s what they were then. I can still see each of their faces and remember vivid details about them, but forever in their youth. Sad chances are that had they lived it is more likely we’d have lost track of one another in our own lives and never been thought of again. Because they were lost I remember them still. And what does that say about me?
LikeLike
It says that you have empathy.
LikeLike
We lost Jay 40 years ago this week. Jay was a brilliant artist, but he acquired a taste for a poison that drove him to depression and ultimately suicide. If he were still around I would have commissioned him for illustrations. If you scroll back a ways into the Poets Page you will find another memorial I had to him in a blank verse called Sixteen Inches
LikeLike