By Jeff Rawlings
How much of me is you,
And you, me?
When I remember the first of us,
It’s just a blur of becoming.
There we were: We, a new thing.
I did not know there were so many ways
To marry, to transfigure, to be astounded.
You and I settled each into the other’s bones.
Oil and water? Yes, but together a balm.
I like to think we wore ourselves out
Falling and rising and laughing back into the fray.
Oh, I hope you are filled now with rightful sleep.
Were we enough, love,
Now that we’re old, filling our listless hours
Between spoons and sleep
With idle talk of spoons and sleep?
I never had a grand plan, dearest.
I knew only where I’d gone for you
But not where we were taking ourselves.
But just this: I always came home to you.
How shall we live?
You there, me here, and nowhere for us.
I will come play my guitar for you
And your lady friends in the drab hallway.
How shall we end, you and I, and us?
Let’s be in the same dream some night
Where you are singing the old songs
While I’m flying us away to anywhere together.
Jeff Rawlings is retired following a military stint, a long career in quality systems management, and a delightful four and a half years on the staff of the Donald W. Reynolds Library serving Baxter County. He is a 1972 U of A Fayetteville English Lit graduate, and he was most active in writing and publishing during the 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, he have reclaimed my passion for the language and the written word. He was the poetry critic for the Poet’s Roundtable of Arkansas for the 2015-2016 term, and he is now connected with several local poets with whom he shares his scribblings and observations.