Poem
LETTING GO
by
Nick Carding
What you don't love it's easy to leave, and I did
time after time;
a typewriter in Dudley, a scooter (ditto),
a girl in Solihull - twice as I remember
(twice was nice).
A small price,
I thought, to pay for a tidy life; dismember
whatever's broken, sift through for useful parts, throw
out the rest and climb
aboard the nearest bus with a ticket valid
for a one way journey only. On with the show!
And on it went, although I left the land
littered with property and lives I'd jettisoned.
Who gave a fuck?
While the road was easy I cruised along, my hand
on the driver's, guiding him round potholes I saw
on the way.
I dare say
I might have travelled further than I did before
the joyride tipped me in your mother's bed unplanned.
You could call it luck
of a kind; she persuaded me to look beyond
myself, to try to carve initials in the sand.
When you don't roll moss gathers quickly, so
I came by houses, horses, all the rest; and you,
the first pole star
I ever had. Down the years I charted your slow
orbit through my sky towards perihelion
in frank awe.
But the shore
on which I stood shifted, and the swift ascension
of a new tide washed my initials from the sand
and carried me far
out into a strange sea. But until I left you
behind, I never had much trouble letting go.
Nick Carding is a Brit who's been hiding in The Netherlands for the past ten years. Married to an itinerant Croat, he escapes south with her as often as he can - but not often enough for his liking.
These days he doesn't often submit - but in the past his work has been published in the UK, USA, Canada, Croatia, Australia and New Zealand.
You can contact him at carding@xs4all.nl
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