Ah, Helen… sitting here this night…it finally came to me
how deeply you affected me.
Softened by acid and the hour …
my running steps have
finally come to ground.
I stopped to look at these poems
and to sort my feelings out
since you left.
And I found I’m a sadder man
for the loss of you.
I cried here and felt
so many feelings come rushing down
and that one hand came
and reached into my gut and twisted
and said, ‘grief’.
And even then I thought of you;
that only you could understand.
I read again the poems you wrote me
the night I slept and you lay awake.
Why is it I only seem to hear
what you said to me in retrospect?
Your patterns were running so fast,
I could only catch them whole in moments.
Your attempts to deal, were edging onto the abrasive.
And the pain under, was speaking so much
to confusion.
And I, the deaf Irishman,
was offering you only conditional relief.
But I see here, now, where you’ve past by.
My scars are plain to see
I got some aches inside me now from you
and these poems that leave me wondering what I believe
There’s so much that separates us logically,
perhaps I should let it lie.
But only you would know how that feels…to let it be that way.
This evening I cried for you … what more can I say.
gallagher
14 oct 78
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —