THE DISTANT LEFTOVER

You with your constant smell of indifference 

And I so hungry for even a sweet side glance. 

But it was not to happen.
Maybe it was fate on the snowy evening 

I sailed 

Away from you:
The last night 

I entered that ferry
The same ferry that always took me back to you 

Because I was seduced by silly things
That never mattered. 

I must have looked so crumbled, so forlorn, 

That a nun stopped reading the Bible and moved 

To sit closer to me, to give me comfort
And solace... and she did. 

As I drifted the waters to reach my home
You disappeared and grew smaller in every way 

Possible, so in many of my later years you 

Became a blurred washed memory. 

And after a great time, when my forgotten passion 

Surfaced and took hold of me,
When the longing that once lived inside of me
Cornered my thoughts and turned you into a rumination, 

I tried to find you. 

But you were gone.
Really gone.
And there was a heavy stillness in my place. 

On cold nights, I remembered the ferry and 

All I could hear was the nun,
The nun who so many years ago told me: “You will still be here
In the morning.” 

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020