The garden has grown
over and become
a sanctuary-of-sorts for all kinds
of stray cats, birds, possums, and other
explosions of indigenous life and
the porch is broken
the shutters just fall
and no more time is to be had
for trifles like these, at all
but there’s a recyclable paper bag
containing donuts once
snagged in a weed tree.
And upon it
“Someone” you will
never forget
has written in
(before trailing off
and going away)
magic marker
calligraphy:
“Dear Sir,
you kissed my feet the last time
I saw you and it made
your hair
fall
around my walking
for a very long time.
But I am OK
this way
out and about again
on my own
yet I thought I
just wanted you
to know
and oh
my hand is steadier now –
and
I used to want you,
I really did, you know”
Dale Barrigar Williams
Saragun Springs 
This is lovely. Beautiful feeling to it. I don’t do very well with free verse but I really enjoyed the images here. dd
LikeLike
Hi Diane
Thanks for your reader-reactions to this. Lovely and with beautiful feeling is exactly what I was going for here and it’s wonderful to know you felt like this poem has these qualities.
Dale
LikeLike
Dale
No less a skeptic that Arthur C Clarke once said that maybe there are conditions in which images from the past can briefly recur in the future; hence an explanation for ghost sightings. The trash bag in this made me think of that. It is not a direct logical connection, but one regardless. Lilting and haunting.
Leila
LikeLike
L.A.
Your comment/ary is brilliant because it points out the connection between poetry and connections and how poetry is all about connections, but less so of the so-called logical kind: and more so of the so-called imaginative variety.
This poem is about living on in the aftermath of various emotional catastrophes (and mental breakdowns) and how nothing remains the same: or disappears.
D.B.
(((PS
This poem also has a familial connection to “The Lady of Shalott” by Tennyson…while I can’t claim to touch Tennyson’s greatness, I do claim to feel an uncanny emotional kinship with him…that feels ghostly.)))
LikeLike
….”The saddest poet in the world.” – T.S. Eliot on Tennyson
LikeLike
A deep ache in this, but an ache made beautiful. Read & ruminate.
Geraint
LikeLike
DWB
Great images! Amazing how you can create such a vision with just a few words. I like how the garden has become a refuge for animals. It goes against the insanity of beautification, which means grass cut to the nub in a treeless yard.
“and no more time is to be had
for trifles like these, at all” I like how this sounds and what it implies.
Excellent writing!
CJA
LikeLiked by 1 person