Saturday, March 15, 2008

Smorgasbord

Who else I might have been

It was about 1920, I think, when I last
had an appetite for doing the Charleston
with my favorite flapper, Flo; she knew how
to make my nights last forever and was
responsible for the good times, but then
.
I vaguely remember a hanging post
with gallows creaking beneath;
a rope of pinching hemp surrounds
my bristly neck in anticipation of the drop
which ends with a sharp twisting crack, and
.
As I stood waiting for the crowd to finish
the deed they had begun I recalled
a queen, a beautiful dame who was
deeply in love with her stable boy,
but at the time I thought I was dreaming, yet
.
Being a horses attendant, a queens "boy" was OK;
as I lay in a mound of hay I wondered why
all that my memory saw was that trip across
the ocean to that far off, unknown land that
was supposedly the place to be that day, however
.
Someday I might remember being me, today,
and perhaps question who else I might have been
if just one day, one hour, one second was different;
Or if I'm lucky I'll not remember at all and
the comparisons, the regrets, will never exist

7 comments:

Linda Jacobs said...

What a trip through time! I enjoyed this poem!

paisley said...

my only ever real affinity with a personage or a time period was with the concentration camps... i wonder if i was there.. or i just feel for them so deeply that i put myself there... this was very nicely done.

Anonymous said...

Sometimes we do feel that way.

The books I would write

Tumblewords: said...

Nice post - I wonder if we all think about who/what we could have been if only.... nicely done!

Anonymous said...

What a stunning response to the prompt! I was enthralled and truly entranced! You have also inspired me to tackle this question in an upcoming blog!!

rebecca said...

i like the way each stanza led to the other as if connected, yet not. this was very nicely done. very, very nice.

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