#743

Promises

(for J.)

It seemed such an appropriate place
to begin a journey
that would never end:

a beach that went on forever
beside a sea that wrapped
itself around the globe;

the symbolism had not
escaped him, nor her,
as she reached for his hand.

The future has to begin somewhere.


10 July 1994
 
 

How we got here’s not important. At least not as important as the fact we are here. You can’t change the past. I’m not even sure you can learn that much from it since it never repeats itself. It’s the old you-can’t-step-in-the-same-river-twice catch. J. wasn’t B. who wasn’t F. who wasn’t M. who wasn’t the other F. who wasn’t the other J. who wasn’t A and would not be C. And there’re lots of lowercase letters in there who never got poems dedicated to or written about them. 

I’d no idea what was going to happen between J. and me. Okay, I had a pretty good idea. We might not have had much of a past but the future was wide open. That said what promises could I possibly make? We never strolled hand in hand on a beach. We held hands, once—twice, if you count my mother’s funeral—and we kissed just the once; not sure how many times we hugged but not many. At the time I didn’t know how little time we were going to have but that’s true of every day of every life. There’re some promises we should never make.