Archive for 1978

1978-01-30

Monday, January 30th, 1978
         I want to make sure
         when it comes time for my accounting
         that I've lived it as I should have,
         no regrets;
         otherwise it just makes no sense.

         All afternoon, the afternoon past.
         Armchair scholar of my life,
         I astride my poems and memories
         sifting ... looking for me.

         Years gone by here again
         those weeks and months
         when I loved Sharon Freeman so deeply
         and Maxine finally saved me from ruin.

         And in the afternoon I finally called Maxine
         and found out how she was.

                                 gallagher
                                 jan 30, 78
                                 Acid tripping'

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1978-02-02

Thursday, February 2nd, 1978

I see her soft smile crushed
and I feel her pain,
reproach in her embrace,
she says I should come back, why not?

I want my life to get better at each juncture,
going back to our marriage is not an advance.
Her tender smiles would turn to bitterness
and my dreams resign themselves to waiting, why?

She thinks my lovers are the main reason why I won’t return
and she doesn’t realize its more of one cloth.
That the cold mornings and lonely afternoons
are better now in my gut than our marriage could be.

When…I see her hurt, I hurt, but I’m unmoved
I love her and her presence in my life
but I’m no longer malleable
because of love.

If she could love me, as I am, I could love her, as I am
and it would all be enough, but…
until then the hours are filled
with pain and the pressure to change.

She never found me so unreachable
and she struggles to grasp my love
which springs free and independent of need
and I can only watch her pain
and love her even as she tries to change me.

gallagher
feb 02, 78

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1978-02-13

Monday, February 13th, 1978

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 —