"Song After Everyone's Asleep" by Deborah Garrison, comes from her second collection of poems, The Second Child. One thing it touches nicely on is the idea of something bringing back memories of a specific, and in this case, special, time from one's past:
Song After Everyone's Asleep
When I woke in the night with a mania
to please you and shifted so you’d sift and
half-wake too, in the dark without my glasses, you
without yours, I reached into your shorts; your lashes
flicked up, and in the blur I caught the smoother face
of the boy you were when you first grabbed my hand
on the path through the woods behind the schoolyard,
a stone’s throw from my mother’s house –
when I felt suddenly entire, that I was a whole body
holding another whole body with my hand.
We can never go back there.
But with eyes still closed you smile
permission for me, with my hand,
to keep you awake awhile.
I also enjoy Garrison's language. The usage of so few sentences, allowing the commas and semi-colons to do their things. Seemingly simple, yet not really the case when one notices how few sentences were used to complete these two stanzas. I look forward to reading more poems from this collection.
Comments