The poem below is a lyric, defined as utterance knowingly addressed to another but expressive of the person whose voice it is understood to be, commonly known as the first person.
I sometimes try to imagine how I would think about things in the here-and-now were I twenty or so. Sometimes I even narrow this search down to the pedantic topic of poetry. One positive thing social media has brought into our lives is the concept of texting, which is what poetry boils down to. Indeed, much lyric poetry amounts to sublimated forms of sexting.
Amazing, isn’t it, that the complex feelings I once had can survive time and take on a new form in a different place, becoming a matter of public record? Ah! but the nature of lyric itself is that one token of love, one of its prime subjects as well, is not caring how public what one says becomes.
This particular poem talks both to one old one which could have borne the same title (“Edge“), and to the last stanza of a new one set nowhere near the above coordinates (“The Giraffes at San Gorgonio“).
***
Earth for others, home is scaffolding
for you, will be till you stop thinking
winters and summers through windows.
See: the world is round. The arcs are mapped
that shadows mark on vacant yards below.
Your room, now ours, has walls of light.
This will be our one last look at weather:
from the west a range of clouds in storm
will raise welts across the purple prairie.
Gusts will speak like we once spoke
with one another. Rain will finally fall
in shimmering sheets like medicine.