Memoir of the Keyless

If I could find that same brass skeleton key
engraved with my initials because
you used it on an autumn Sunday,
arctic breeze biting the cheek of the
girl aside from you on the sapless
planks of the old oak bench,
and opened her heart.

She was the only person you’d known to be
afraid of a pattern and the doves listened,
perched on her ring finger as she whispered
a song to soothe their ears of a drumming
cry.

She noticed how you would brace yourself, gather
courage, muster, every bit of integrity before
you spoke my name, and how afterwards you would
retreat to saying how you’d never thought a
word could be so melodic and expressive –
old grey flower in French
and Greek for
mighty empress.

So if I could find that same brass skeleton key
engraved with my initials,
I would race back to our special cove in the midst of
tall sequoias and the hues of brown, red, and orange
leaves only to fall before my knees and tell
her lover who had sat beside me
on the sapless planks of the old oak bench
that autumn Sunday,
“I do”.

Comments & reviews · 2
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I love this. Unlike some of the poems of romance I've read, it isn't pretentious and cliche. This is real and somewhat of a riddle until you read it through slowly a few times. I loved the way your descriptions were, like the hues of the sequoias. Also, I thought it flowed really well, despite the lack of metre. The syllabic content of each line was pretty balanced. The overall emotion and meaning was good too. I really don't know what to tell you to work on. I guess, making it easier to understand might help it's reception, but good poetry can be sort of labyrinthe anyway. Overall, I loved it, and my main piece of advice is to just keep it up.

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AdamBH
Review
AdamBH wrote a review · Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:43 pm

Wow! That's deep! I loved it although it took me two reads to get it. Is 'she' 'you'? If so I love how you used that almost jealousy of yourself, and I loved the metaphors you used. They are so descriptive, after you think about them a little.

It's really good. Really really good. It's one of those poems that doesn't seem to make much sense immediately but when you are detrmined to understand it works and it actually doesn't look like it could be written any other way, so very well done.

I love the general feel of sadness and anger in the poem, it's very emotive and I love how it's painted in very bright romantic colours, and at the same time it's plagued with a sense of unease and despair.

The only thing I can add is, did you use a metre? I didn't pick up one one, perhaps you could :) Keep writing im going to follow you now :D



One by one they went / And, though each laughed as he returned to earth / Their souls were in their eyes.
— Alfred Noyes (Watchers of the Sky)