1978-02-13

Come turn the years and swirl them here
and bring us around full circle again.

Over coffee, today, so much came to an end.
For years her house and memory had beckoned
and lingered … and waited
and I’d driven by it a thousand times
in my lifetime since then … past its whispering.

Her memories and questions waited, until today
over coffee, when all those years came to join us
and we found what had become of us then.

Down dark years and through darker paths …
through schools and marriages …
and drugs and sex.
She’d been cast into these from the events
that spawned both of us so long ago.

I’d taken her virginity (and mine) then
back when I didn’t think it could matter …
but it did, as the tangled years have come to tell.
Pressed then, in roles beyond our knowing,
we danced our dances, blindly … savagely ….
And I’d used her then … just as she’d wished it
until, finally, I left her without a look back
and let all the years behind me sleep
until today.

And today, among the plates and lights,
our roots re passed, untangling, and she forgave me
and all the years that had waited began to forget themselves.

gallagher

13 feb 78

– after meeting Sally Henderson

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

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