The landscape tapers to a point
Far beyond my sight.
I can try to capture the image,
Reconstruct the distant cape from memory,
Chalk it out on paper,
Scrape the surface with my charcoal
And hope I can create
Something...

Something that resembles the cape--
I can only hope to make something close to truth.

Recall the escapades, recall escaping.
Recall shapes and shadows on the wall,
Recall the hills, recall it all.

Down the stairs flew my fee fie foe.
At the bottom, he stubbed his toe.
Out fell Jack,
Who landed flat,
Lying next to Fee Fie Foe.

It was the fifth fall I knew him
That we cast our shadows on the cape.
Curving roads that spiraled down
Guided us to the water’s edge.
We stood at the tip of the cape,
The bay to our backs, and I gaped at the sea
As if in my gaping the waters might engulf me,
I might be swept to sea.
But no.

The following February he had left.
I stood alone then, with the wind whispering,
“Don’t you know he left you?
Don’t you know the waters love you?
Don’t you want the waters lifting you?”
But I did not go to the cape.
No, I kept that our secret place,
Where just the two of us and the sea could be
Together. Free.

Recall the escapades, recall escaping.
Recall shapes and shadows on the wall,
Recall the hills, recall it all.

There, where the landscape tapers to a point
Far beyond my sight,
I reconstruct the image in my mind.
There the two of us are standing, shivering.
I plot it out in memory,
Pausing to remember where we sat and how we stood.
Shadows play in my mind, behind my eyes,
Where still I see the cape.

My fee fie foe has fallen down,
He tripped and stumbled, fell to ground.
Why Jack went too,
I never knew,
But Fee Fie Foe stopped coming around.

From memory into memory,
The shades take shape before me,
And I hope I can create
Something...

Something close to the cape,
Something that resembles the way things were,
Something through which I can finally escape.

04/19/2004

Author's Note: I have someone who was once my best friend. We have since somehow fallen out of touch and out of friendship. On 18 April 2004, my friend's father died. This was written two hours after I found out. Since I found out, my mind has been replaying and replaying every moment and every conversation I had with both my friend and the father. There was never a cape. There's just something in the way the word sounds that somehow expresses how I feel.

Posted on 04/20/2004
Copyright © 2024 Devon E Mattys