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8/9/2019 Love Come Love Go She Come She Go.scribeD
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She Come. She Go. She Came. She Went.
By Bruce D. Gormley
circa 1973
Scene Looking at Same Farm House
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She Came, She Go
Throughout Vermont on this morning,
the alarms
bells, buzzers, beeps sounded their call in tens of thousands of homes.
Warm feet hit the frigid floor
Babies cried. Children screamed.
Legs swung to the floor and everyone sat still for a while.
Then
Yawns. Hugs. sharp yelling words.Laughter. gentle talk.
Eyes looked out to check the weather
Some paused and took a second look at the sky.
Hands hurried to pull on clothes and fasten for the rain or sun.
Water steamed through coffee and the smell soothed the senses
And made people hungry for toast, eggs and bacon.
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Children scurried and animals watched and waited for their food.
Hats, scarves, coat, gloves, mittens
Kisses goodbye. See you later.
Today I got up and sat at the edge of my bed for too long.
I felt alone.
It was too quiet.
I wanted to make breakfast for more than just me.
I wanted to talk to someone about the weather,
about the news,
about the aurora borealis I saw last week -
about anything.
I was hungry not-for-breakfast-alone;
I was thinking of you.
I looked down the long dirt driveway
lined by aged faithful maples
forming a tunnel that cuts through the fields.
The fog hung on the land still.
The farm was backlit by the rising sun,
Making the trees glow dark
red, then pink, then pink-
yellow.
I looked out the front window and waited
for your wonderfully-wispy figure to appear,
walking as you always do when you
come to me -
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slowly (or is it idly or cautiously?)
On this particular day I envisioned you
in a country girl dress with pleats that fluttered in the breeze.
That Day You Came
From no where today.
You seemed to drop out of the sky today.
Silently you walked to me
with a slow smile.
Today
You appeared as a tiny distant doting indistinct dot,
far down the driveway.
I.squinting..
Then soon I knew it was you by the way you walked
slowly and smoothly although stopping now and then
then seemingly gliding in soft angel steps inches off the ground.
Now and then you gazed upward at the maple branches
and looked off toward the fields and the five mountains one beyond the other
as though curious and wondering where
(and perhaps why) you were there.
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I thought I saw you hesitate once or twice
You even turned around to face
the space from whence you came
Then to my appreciation
you then walked on a little swifter
to me
closer and closer.
Today you appeared
just when I thought
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I had almost forgotten you.
and just when I thought you
had forgotten me for sure.
You appeared though my hopes were
shrouded like ancient women at a funeral.
You were dead and arose again .
You were a mere flash of my mind
granted (again) flesh and warmth and breath
and warm skin for me to perhaps touch
yielding lips to kiss and a quiet voice
to repair my fragile
crystalline mind.
That morning was unusually warm for early spring.
A fog drifted idly in a ribbon
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along the insistent and persistent ice of the snow feed stream.
The fog formed a misty line,
looking as if drawn in oils by
the talented dabbing hand of a master artist.
The stream strayed off as far as I could see
and then out of sight
where it cut between two gray hills
with trees that had only the adolescent stubble of tiny leaves.
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In the valleys where the sun hardly shines
The snow melted unceremoniously
in the changing-to pink-to-yellow-to-white-light-blue-sky -
intensifying sunlight.
You walked over the wet grass
into the middle of the front yard
and stood stationary as if lost in thought,
perhaps unsure
but driven to me by some primordial instinct .
I held my breath.
Come to me, I whispered to your image
I could hear the dripping of dew
from the naked-warming-slowly branches in the back wood lot.
The trees are laughing because the snow is gone, I thought ,
Their sleep is over.
Spring rain has awakened them
And their tiny buds aim skyward and absorb the sun
Soon they will spread as an eager maiden
And receive the sun light and warmth
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Come to me, I urged I a whisper.
And their tiny buds aim skyward and absorb the sun
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I moved my lips to make those words but am not sure if
I actually spoke the words.
No one morns the passing of the snow.
Its here for a while and then it goes away
for long hot seasons.
It is loved at first, then taken for granted
until one gets tired of it.
But now even in April, it might snow tomorrow.
In Vermont, no one is ever sure of
a particular snowfall being the last of the year -
until perhaps July.
No bells echo down the valley
for the funeral of that cold glistening whiteness.
There are no final funerals for snow -
No closure. No condolences. No tears.
No fragrant bouquets
to soothe the senses.
I thought - you come and go,
go and come like snow
but without the regularity of seasons.
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When you go away, you blanket the world
And take the colors with you
And make the world black, white and gray.
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I stood in the window watching you come to me
And you
Your weather is New Englands.
You have your seasons but without the comfortable reliability.
And you come as in the infancy of spring
You have not forgotten how to be reincarnated
For too long you hide from me like a child.
Then something happens to you
And you come home.
(Then perhaps the noreasters of your soul spin for a while
in some deep cold part of your mind
that will not be warmed and tamed)
and
you go away, perhaps forever
I never know if it will be weeks, months or years
or forever.
Sometimes I feel I am a immobile rough hewn statue
Of jagged ice
and you come to me
with gracious and creative warm hands
and you smooth away my sharp edges.
You sculpt me into a masterpiece.
That is how you make me feel.
You are a fine artist with most talented hands.
It is strange how you go away,
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then appear like dawn at midnight
and give yourself so completely to me
as before
- in time too far away -Then you leave
To a place with no address.
When I kiss you, I remember and always say to myself
With silent suppressed surprised delight, -
Yes, that's how your kissing was.
Not quite as I tried yesterday to remember it.
Oh better, much better.
You are softer than rainbow rain,
warmer than the feeling of down quilts thrown over me
on February nights at two oclock by someone who loves me.
Each time together is the first time
so it seems.
but the last time
perhaps.
I take off your clothes like a child unwrapping a present,
but slowly, gently.
And you watch me
Fascinated
like a giver pleased to give.
I love you.
We never did just take our clothes off
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and jump into bed.
I would kiss you
and you would sigh like you were never before kissed.
I always touched you everywhere
In all your hidden places
until clothes got in the way.
Slowly - always we undressed each other
tossing clothes out of the way
like children laughing at silly inhibitions.
Often, naked we would dance slowly .
Often we both were very aware that we drifted
back in time to enchanted teenage places
when love was brand new
and startling.
"Do you remember..." you would ask
like you were saying a prayer," ...the time we went to
Nauset Light beach on the Cape in the storm?"
(Of course, I remembered everything
of that occasion so I said)
"And we defied the lightning
and walked the beach at the edge of the breakers."
We felt fearlessly immortal.
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We felt like together-forever-summer
As constant and powerful as the waves
that rolled with delight
upon finding at last warm sand.
Without breaking the melodic cadence
of the incantation you continued,
"And then the warm rain fell.
You said it was our baptism."
I said
Remember how it washed away the sand and salt water mist
and we licked the rain from each others bodies."
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(I do remember thinking that I was glad of the rain
and the salty spray,
because there was no way
you could tell my tears from the raindrops. )
because.
Underneath it all, deeply inside, even then
some part of me was saying that autumn
followed the eternal summer.
Then and there in that summer - In my mind I was seeing that beach
as it would appear to me alone in winter --
sand covered by snow made sloppy by salt spray.
Into my farm house you came
straight into my arms without a word.
Today in a misty dream where nothing existed but us.
We lost track of time.
We were not anyplace here or there or then or now
but every-place where we had been before
That's what we do to each other still.
Your breasts are always softer to touch
after months or years of neglect.
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(When you are gone, I unfold and touch the petals of
fragile flowers
in your honor.)
My eyes always dwell on your gently stark shapes.
Sometimes (I can't help it) I find myself
memorizing, staring
at your eyes, your nose, your lips, your arms and legs, your breasts -- I stare at.
every curve and contour of your here-now body
because I know you will go away again ...
perhaps this time forever.
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Countless times in bed alone,
I try to remember how it was
that your wispy fingers teased me.
I try to picture your lips
when I bend to kiss you.
I can always fleetingly see your face
but just as I am about to
recreate you in my imagination,
your image stuns me like just as if
I woke up and.
The dream is broken
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How can I explain?
It was like one day in winter
I stood on the snow covered upper pasture
on a frigid winter afternoon - 4:30 and already getting dark.
I stared out over the curved meadows
that sloped to the frozen stream
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Everything was indistinct in dull grayness
And then abruptly the sun shined through a break in the clouds.
It felt like a sudden warmness was about
to caress my back like your hands.
There was clarity for a moment
but then my eyes were blinded by the intensity
I squinted against the brilliance but then
Black clouds slid in closing the crack in the dome of dusk and ..
the light was gone.
That is our story.
(Light-Dark
Hot-Cold
Begin-End
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And too much time in between.)
Sometimes the light melts the images
in my imagination.
I struggle to keep images
and I try to kiss you,
and am disappointed you are not there.
Yes, sometimes in dreams, I hold you closely and you are there.
I am about to kiss you and then damn it
I wake up and try
desperately to return to the dream.
I curse the noise
that woke me up.
I curse the sun and its interfering light.
I try to recall the dream, to go back,
but it is gone.
Every detail, every feeling that I cant
remember torments me.
I struggle to remember some little detail,
something to lead me back.
But no, I am grasping at rays of light.
Dulls and makes the details fuzzy
Rain falls on the water color masterpiece
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that my mind is in the midst of painting.
And
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helpless I watch -
I cannot stop the November fog and rain.
Each time you come,
I think I will forever-remember every movement
of your hips, your tongue,
your talented hands ...
How could such wonders be forgotten?
But each day drops another cold veil
Of more opaque snow across your face.
When you arrive, suddenly you are not just a memory anymore
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though I know you will go away again
and become a memory again.
Each time you come, your kiss-anew
provides me with months
of now and then new fresh memories to create -
Spontaneous flashbacks now and then to enjoy.
Yes - for memories, I dont have to
dig so deep, but
How the dark big-ole-cold winter months-especially
dull and fuzzy up the details.
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Sometimes, I look out the window and remember
the successive frosts of Autumn
that cover my green lawn with layers of leaves.
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The red maples are the last to go
and their broad warped leaves cover all.
treasuries
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Naked branches let the sun shine on me
and I should be warm
but earlier and earlier in the afternoon
the sun casts long cold shadows
cold fingers that touch your back and make you shiver
Yes, and the nights are darker and last fifteen
hours.
It is a longer night when you are alone.
When You come,
I say I'll write it down,.
Ill write down all the details of our love-making
and everything we said that made us laugh together,
but I never do.
Words are trees that lose their leaves
when the cold freezes only the sap
that hesitates to hide in the frigid ground.
Words are bodies dead on arrival,
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Yes this is the same tree
from a different
perspectivelike all
your perspectives
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or worse words are skeletons of what used to be
They mock the sacred memory of the once-beautiful moments.
Words are too gross to express the sacred.
I have no photos of you.
I'll take your picture, I say to myself sometimes
but you wont let me.
It always has to be enough that you are there.
The only picture I have of you is your yearbook picture
And the picture that appears and disappears spontaneously
as a flash in my mind,
I never know when and why I suddenly think of you
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But it is often and sometimes I think
Always
Always you are there wherever I am.
I torment myself wondering..
Do you think our time together is a treasure
to be taken out and appreciated only once in a while?
Do you think our love would not be so valuable
if we spent it wantonly for a long period of time?
Do you think the romance would burn and consume itself
if we let it be wild?
How could you think I would tire of you,
tire of hugging and kissing you?
In darker moments though,
I fear you are right.
God forbid that kissing you would become routine.
It is everything but routine.
But the cost of loneliness and wanting is high.
Once out of the clear blue
I asked you why you come to me
And you said,
"Because I ... Because you ...."
and then you stopped speaking
and stilled my mouth with kisses
that I did not want to question.
I do not question kisses.
And why do you go away, I ask.
You never explain and I do not understand.
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Sometimes I even entertain the thought that
you will come and stay forever
but something in me remembers
that your shoes are always by the door,
and when a certain time comes,
I wake up and the shoes are gone
You have left at times even in the midst of blizzards
leaving brief footprints on the path to the road
and on my mind.
When it's time to go,
you're gone.
You always seem to walk faster when you leave
and your steps are heavy and deliberate.
I have watched you leaving.
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You always look back ...
So far, you always look back,
but someday you might not.
I never know.
On early November New England Sundays,
I sit before the window
and watch the snow slowly cover the still green fields.
Slowly the distinct edges of the stone walls
are rounded off in blurry wind curved strokes
...and the descending sun colors the landscape
in all colors from yellow to pink, then
black, gray and white.
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I want to see your image emerging from the falling snow.
And I await your return
clinging more and more to the last smooth images
of your magic body that is like
no-other-distinct-stark-nakedness.
I try to imagine what it was like when you came,
what it will be like -
if you ever come again.
If you ever come and go again.
Dancing to me with wanton whimsy
making footprints brief-just-as-spring
in and out of the wildly flowering fields of my soul.
I think of death -
Someday I will not be there.
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There will be no answer when you knock on the door.
Or someday you will not come.
It may not always be so.
So be it..
If it must be
And it must.
(No choice)
Just so long
And long enough.