Requiem
A poem by Marietta Calvanico

Requiem

The beach isn’t lonely on an autumn afternoon,
Down by the jetty another four-wheeler turns, grinding and kicking up sand,
Bait-diggers with shovels and pails, fishermen wading out knee-deep,
I don’t miss the happy noise of past summers when I walked here with you,
This cool salty calm suits me now.

We were ageless together,
Childhood blurred into teen years
and we didn’t notice when
we became women,
We never changed for each other.

In the beginning slow, long summers
took you away
road-tripping with your family,
sending me postcards
from dream-like places I had never been.

We were twinned in random timing:
our marriages and motherhood
our divorces and our hardening
alternating moves
until we lost count

I am grateful for those past innocent days,
times long before anything tainted us,
joint decisions on future occupations:
actress, WAVE, WAC, writer,
You are here in the last.

The tide pulls out and reveals
a swath of compressed wet sand,
I think of walking here with you,
your dogs running freely
chasing something imaginary up to the water’s edge.

About the Author:

Marietta Calvanico has lived a rich and varied life. She built a career in advertising/marketing, worked with her architect husband, raised a daughter who is a teacher, and played bass in dive bars. She has shared her homes with many cats. Her poetry, fiction and memoir pieces have appeared on line and in print.

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