Public Republic

Roger Craik

Photo: Ctd 2005

Afterwards I pulled up one blue sheet
Above us both.
It made a cave and there we lay.
The blue light that we made
Was ours alone.

I told you then how many caves,
More than the number of our days,
Were ours to have in London, Venice, Amsterdam,
But most of all in this Ohio town
Where we began.

I think that you believed me then.
You might have cried, perhaps you did,
encaverned there,
Before returning to the other man
You told yourself you loved.

Now the days are emptying into years
Where you will live alone with him
And I perhaps with others, now and then,
Where sheets are simply sheets to lie beneath,
But never make into a cave.

Poem from the volume of poetry “Those Years“