Sitting with Alex Rice

Toes weeping we wept by the harbour walls,
in the days before they put a safety rail up,
Alex was in love with Georgia, I can't recall,
who the incumbent of that time was, perhaps
it was sympatico, or we had had too much grappa,
it was lapping at the stones, I could feel the boney
shuddering gasps as he revealed how misunderstood
as we generally were in those days, his lazy hair
brushing a la Hugh Grant, long before we ever heard.
Alex flung the bottle, the only message a burp in the sea,
those were the days of foreign legions before the romance
became a reality and banana boats only cost you the ride,
so long as you scrubbed, leaving behind the rubber trails
of tarmac tyres, and liars wearing medallions.
I think we kissed, I can't quite say, he was very beautiful,
or perhaps I was crying as well, I just remember the way
the harbour lights shone out, somewhere a girl on a beach,
picked up the bottle, sand smooth, smiling our wide breath,
I can't remember breathing, it seems to come so naturally,
sitting with Alex Rice, who cried over a girl and we listened
to the gentle lap of boats, moored fast, unfastening us,
I wonder which way you floated, I took my dreams
in a glass bottomed boat, watching messages in bottles
flung out to sea, only to sink and all those loves,
I wonder what happened to them and Alex Rice.




Poetry by Elle The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 470 times
Written on 2013-07-27 at 20:17

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countryfog
It is one thing for one to have the experiences and memories that you do, but quite another to be able to enter into them again so completely and vividly as you do. There is always a sense of gratitude and even reverence for them, even the ones that may not have seemed deserving of it at the time. A sense too that you have come to accept everything as necessary then to who and where you are now.
2013-07-28