Youthful Poetry

I once took a course, many years ago, that required me to write poetry. I have never considered myself a poet or a connoisseur of poetry, but I did as I was asked. That poetry was put into a ring binder and added to a box of miscellany that I recently rediscovered.

Here are a couple of those poems; they are both reflections on the end of a love affair.

Untitled #1

I turned round and waved a hand
through the window of the cab
My last goodbye to you
in a lonely service station
somewhere along the road
The night was black
It was starting to rain
and you looked up at me
but I only caught a glimpse
because I was moving on.

Untitled #2

Today the rain fell, the wind blew.
Wet leaves, brown beneath my boots
New boots, tall black boots,
make me high.
I'm flying high.
Higher than I've ever seen.
I saw a leaf alone at the tip of a twig
and I smiled.
Silly leaf.
Happy leaf.
Loving life so much
We both want to watch the winter come.
We're just going to hang around
until it's time for us to go
and we'll go away with a smile
because we knew when to stay
and it'll take more rain than that
to bring us down.

There are lots more like this, all typed out on a manual typewriter! A lot of them have references to rain, probably because the course I took was in the north of England in the autumn. It was also at a major turning point in my life, which is probably why I kept the binder.

I seem to have kept up the poetry-writing for a year or two after that, and there are some that were written when I first arrived in Canada. Included in the binder are a few essays, and two are entitled “Flaneurs R Us” and “Why I Am Not A Feminist’! I haven’t re-read them yet, but I am amused by the titles. A lot has changed since then.