Poet-Birth: 1961---a poem by stephen richard eng

Poet-Birth:  1961

At school I found the spaces in between

Her letters lengthened as the days grew brief,

And letters that I wrote were still as green

As spring before the fall inflames each leaf,

That tumbles to the pavement, brown and dead.

I read her final one that Saturday,

As rage and fierce revenge throbbed in my head,

I knew how futile to believe that she, not he, would pay.

But still I sampled other faces and sweet hair

And throbbing sighs, that couldn’t really last:

In someone else’s eyes her ghost danced there,

Reminding me of grief ahead, not past,

As winter worsened and I learned to write

My first bad poems, full of self-hurt spite.

05-21-76 (rev. 06-16-90)