Poem: "In the Wildscape of My Dreams"

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(Photo: Free images)

Wildscape


By Rachel Watson

I met an old friend last night
in the wildscape of my dreams.
It had been a dozen years 
since we last locked eyes.

I saw him sitting 
at my mother’s kitchen table
in a sunny wildflow’r garden
next to the ladder on a treehouse.

He leaned back, tipping his chair,
with that middle-parted hair,
grinding deep grooves in the ground
while I regarded him anew.

I asked if he recalled basement jams
and living room horror film fests.
He smiled at me sardonically
and answered me laconically.

The years had not been kind:
I saw it in his gaunt, hollow features,
his spare, worn clothing,
and the cracks and stains in his nails.

How did such hardness spin
from a childhood I thought we shared?
Then I reflected that he held little
of my own family’s story, too.

For all I knew, he saw the garden,
the table, the treehouse, the chairs,
and pitied me in the way I pitied him
for not getting out. For staying put.

Copyright © Rachel E. Watson 2015.


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