Old Girlfriends from Across the Ocean by John Grey

Originally published in New Orphic Review (April 1998)

Again the time of remembrance is here.
Always and everywhere I repeat old actions
in a cynical laugh shot through with trembling.
It's years since I walked on native soil
or tossed a head in any way handsome.
Old loves, I'd like to name them all
but, in this country, they're on no currency.
And, if they remember me at all,
they're a very wide ocean too late.

And yet it's not for myself I speak,
nor why my accent points a little toward home.
I don't unbolt that door completely,
afraid of how un-American I'd suddenly become.
But across those waters, wryly claimed Pacific,
are all those who stood with me then.
They knew who I was in those days
but now there's no one to ask.

Was there black and blonde hair?
Did some cheeks puff up pink
and others succumb to the hours of tan?
If I'm in their memory, then I accept the honor.
But if I'm part of all that's razed behind them
then I revel in my role in the ash.

There are moments when the day turns dark all of a sudden,
when it seems as if a desolate, despairing shadow seeks me.
My life is just at that age. Time is still now.
But how easy the past get its hands on it.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Plainsongs, Willard and Maple and Connecticut River Review.