A Poem for Remembering

“For Bruce”

 

I’m 550 lonely miles away from you tonight

And the music played on

Bruce’s guitar awakening my soul

Enveloping my being

Healing my spirit

Music, a voice for our inner recesses

Not so much a reminder of physical reality

As a gauge for our own buried emotional selves

I confer thanks to the Boss and his band

It was their music that found its way deep within a lost me

Reminding me of how I was

Who I was—

Feelings of 15 years ago

Your grace, your smile;

Your boundless energy

Your songs helped me

Remember how I once felt…

How difficult, intense, afraid, self-conscious

I had been

How much I misunderstood my own fears and motivations

How much I missed another's love – even as penned in words, black and white before my eyes…

I read other motivations on his part

What a mixed up young woman I was

Still how real my emotions, feelings…how they marked my being and shaped my persona

I re-read

“I’m 550 lonely miles from you tonight”

From your smile

From kissing you at red lights

From daring to be your lover

I’m 550 light years from you

Trapped in my dogma

Trapped in my fear

Trapped in my anger

These 550 miles of lonely separation

Confirm my devotion to our loving

Confirm my sadness in our parting

Confirm my fear in your leaving

Tonight in my present world

A scientist on television affirms my greatest regret

My keenest knowing

That it is time not space

That separates you from me

I am 15 busy, fully-lived, somewhat enlightened, hair-graying, life-giving years form you tonight

With my husband asleep on the couch

With my baby slumbering in his childhood dreams

I sit here reading old letters of love, remembering

Piecing together the loneliness

The intensity

The naïve and innocent love that once separated you and me

Now it is apparent how damn stubborn I was

Thankfully, how much I’ve grown

Undoubtedly how much I still must learn

And I give thanks to the musical reminder

That transported me back in time to a space

Defined as 550 lonely miles separating you and me

(Written November 22, 1999 following a Sprinsteen Concert and revisiting a long gone me)