word wednesday | poetry poem writing | todd regoulinsky

Word Wednesday

I like to make these posts a mixture of new and old poems, but I don’t usually reach back quite this far. This one is from ten years ago and is presented with no editing worth mentioning.

all these years

the shadow has been dancing in front of me,
wandering back and forth unsteadily - 
me, always a few steps too far behind 
to properly see or understand what was happening.

and now, in this room with the windows open
to the sounds of a pleasantly cool July evening,
the pieces all drop into their proper places and
it all just makes sense.

typing out my pain in the swamps down south,
perspiration more prevalent than inspiration,
and beer leading 3-to-1 over either
at any given moment. the days
of scrawling words into composition books
during high school and college lunch breaks.
the in-between times when I was unlucky
enough to be in love and foolish.

it’s all been some marvelously cruel adventure
that, at least at this moment, I wouldn’t trade
for any amount of money or anyone else’s
story.