why?

A poem by Lorne Laliberte

Foreword:

Now this is an old poem. :)

I found it in a box of writing stuff I moved upstairs in anticipation of a big spring flood. A photocopy of the original poem, hand-written on lined, hole-punched paper, and dated March 13, 1987. I was fifteen at the time, and vaguely remember writing it while bored to tears in an English class.

One calm night,
the stars shone brightly
on a small, sandy beach
by the ocean.

A young girl, crying,
comes onto the sand,
and looks up at the
moon with sparkling eyes.

She falls to her knees,
and weeps for what is right
but can not find it.
And so the waves come in
and she is gone.

Dawn comes quietly,
and with it a young man,
searching for the one he loves so right
   yet wronged so wrong.

A glint of metal,
pushed up by a wave,
resting ring-shaped
at his feet.

He kneels, clasps it
and, through choking sobs,
his lips form a single,
   soundless cry.

why?

Afterword:

I think I had a good sense of rhythm, even back then. But this poem suffers for it -- it has a lack of realness that comes from naiveté and, I suspect, from writing out of the blue, putting down words that sound nice without really thinking about having something to say.

Or am I being too hard on my younger self? I see young writing: "Searching for the one he loves so right yet wronged so wrong." I can't quite put my finger on why, but this sounds terribly clichéd to me. Not to mention shallow.

Still, it's a sweet sort of sad little poem. And it's neat to know that I wrote my r's like crooked v's back then, too. :)

Last modified: November 15, 2003
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