LIMERENCE 1

Why am I feeling all this great emotion?

Perhaps I am thinking of poor Mary, 

Moving away after so long living

In a quietly familiar and convenient place. 

Mary, audibly rocking and rocking in the 

Same chair above me as she aged into invisibility…

And soon I too will leave this same place.

For how long did I live with illusions, 

Locking away all transitory possibilities 

And realities and choosing instead to 

Dwell inside mercurial fantasies and 

Interior delusions and then grounding a still life?

Now the fading obstacles hardly matter.

The grey heavy details carved and set in stones 

Have been kicked away by newer shades 

Of sharp pastels that do not even belong 

To me in my particular smallness.

Fog is moving in from the Hudson River,

Passing over yesterday and all the 

Layered stories and everything 

That came… before.

Marjorie J. Levine © March 18, 2023

TWO POEMS FROM ROAD TRIPS

from ROAD TRIPS, poems

SHIPWRECKED

I remembered the silence within the 

One turn… the turn at the corner that I 

Believed would flatter my possibilities

And point me in a different direction.

But at the end of each day, I crossed the 

Finish line at no particular extraordinary 

Place: I was suspended in space where a 

Past hardly mattered, where on new days 

I bent to the bricks on roads that struggled 

To keep me going. 

 

All avenues had narrow lanes

With no wiggle room and allowed for 

No deep different dives.

So I went this way, went that way

Many times knitting elixirs 

In grey attics so I could

Navigate bridges

Drive through a tunnel

Take a train passing a river

Live in solitary confinement 

Or get lost at sea and not feel abandoned.

When I reached the end, I finally 

Understood nothing mattered:

Not my angers, not the songs I sang 

Or my spoken words, or my written words 

Scrawled like graffiti on the toilet wall. 

It was only the distant sound of 

A lover’s heart still beating

That always should have 

Brought me home. 

Marjorie J. Levine © 2020

THE WAY HE LOOKED AT HER

I have lived my entire life

Within my own head, consumed 

With possibilities but never catching 

That brass ring.

I went close to so many rocky borders

But never took chances 

Or crossed any dangerous lines. 

I danced with strangers at sock hops

And later passed through 

Usual stages:

I dated this guy, went out with that guy,

Picked up guys at bars,

Wore boyfriend shirts,

And as the decades rolled by

I clung to unusual stages:

Developing crushes on men 

Who did not even give me a side glance.

I rolled along this way or that way

And let time pass quickly under

No remarkable relationship umbrella. 

It was just the way it was:

Some just fall through 

The romance cracks. 

But as I aged, my pages

Were showing sharper glimpses of 

What eluded me. 

The strong wind knocked something

Over and when I looked through the 

Window and saw under a street light

The way he was looking at her, 

I realized life had passed me by. 

Marjorie J. Levine © 2020

STORM

Wednesday: 

It was a perfect storm

On a particular almost desolate highway.

The curves in the grounded road were often 

Filled with traffic but on stormy days, 

Sometimes not.

There was a sudden present on one day

One hard rainy day when water filled the air

In moments that gathered and pushed to

A new present with water and visible 

Angled lightning that passed in the rear view.

One life, that on most stripped down days

Barely mattered to many or oddly even any,

Turned and that dusk was carved into memory. 

On that day, it was a blurry remarkable 

Occurrence that happened in almost

Darkness, when the grey ripples 

Of thunder in the air parted and 

Forced her to listen to nothing. 

But she remembered,

She remembered… to slow down. 

And then with no warning,

A rapid appearance startled. 

And right, moving to left, 

From one side to the other side

Two old bent strangers with 

No umbrellas, but holding hands… 

Crossed the road.

© Marjorie J. Levine 2021

FAN ART

three from ROAD TRIPS

BREAKING BREAD WITH A STRANGER 

During large gatherings,

I always dined alone in my room
And savored the meal.

There were no distractions:
No loud arguments
No political debates
No family photos to view
And no fake smiles or phony laughs through 

Which to suffer.

There was no vacuous noise in my left ear.
The uncles worried about Aunt Ruth, who was 

Taking a break from Bingo, every cousin thinking 

She might fall asleep at the wheel. 

Those were the days when at midnight
I would rest on the patio hammock
And look up at the night sky and imagine
The holiday dinners that would roll out into my future. 

Decades later, on a snowy Sunday,
I walked to Bickford’s and sat at the counter
All alone in the back.
My company was an old book
I picked up at the Strand:
The Secret of the Old Clock.

There was unexpected solace in
The visual rerun.
A man sat down near to me
And he soon dined on beef stew.
He looked weary and he carried
On his shoulders the weight of stone blocks.
I moved closer to him
As if the closeness would attach me to an unfamiliar comfort: 

A sweet zone that was strange yet oddly made me feel secure. 

THE EMPTY PARK

You returned in the still quiet to 

Dyker Beach Park and sat in the 

Glare of broad daylight 

Under the old night street light.

You lost parts of yourself as I did 

When moments tumbled away 

When so many of us went away.

That was the place where the 

Chipped pieces of our button candy 

Melted into washed swirls of abstract art …

Where yesterday’s bumpy seesaw,

Broken now, points to a tired and 

Rusty jungle gym where you chased me

As if catching me would be a brass ring. 

The benches where the old grandmas sat

And gossiped about the cuckold

Are empty now and dirty snow has

Collected on the path where strollers

Stood at attention waiting to be pushed 

All the way home.

You returned for seven days:

As if sitting shiva would

Give you sweet solace and comfort 

And bring you closer to 

Something that once was. 

WHAT GROUNDS A TOWN

This town is painted with detailed brushstrokes

Within graphics that visually trickle by.

Drivers on the main street and 

Passengers on the outskirts 

Of these tangled streets 

Forget what passed in the rear view mirror.

Later, maybe: the drivers and the passengers

Go to the drive-in to see comedies. 

While at the same time, 

Past times are always painfully 

Remembered by victims and visitors 

In the core, and they are not laughing. 

Riders on trains pass stone walls where 

On the other side black and white silent films 

Once played on screens and now scraps 

Of old newspapers from years 

Gone by are reminders of layered agonies 

That spill hopelessly to the lakes.

After one defined breath, walkers pause 

In this town to stare at that place 

And remain in place to share curious glimpses.

I myself stopped there one rainy night when deep 

Melancholy drove me to drive, to drive in all ways 

I could creep and through all paths my imagination 

Could crawl, so I could think and make sense 

Of the whole senseless. 

And when I stopped on State Street

I inhaled and with one whiff 

The total of all the layered misery 

From all different harsh sides was inside me. 

Strangers in other towns never knew of the 

Solid prison next to railroad tracks where the mournful 

Sounds of trains passing was a constant reminder

Of the past in which a life could have advanced

Along a different and less wrongful path

Leading to different ends. 

Locals always whispered of inmates filled with 

Despair who died inside that place and many still wait 

For the ages inside that place so they too 

Can die and reach the end of the line.

I thought of the lonely men who lived in solitary 

Confinement and live in a bleak prison next 

To railroad tracks where mournful sounds

Of trains passing filled and fill the air.

Hopeless inmates waited to die and still wait

For rightful justice to be served: 

An eye for an eye, 

Served up plain and simple.

Long after I left that place I heard for many 

Nights, in my small city apartment and while alone 

In own my bed, the sad faraway sounds of trains 

Passing as they carried innocent riders to other places 

And probably some measure of happiness… 

In full blown living Technicolor.

On a rainy cold day, 

I was disturbed when the wind blew

The curtains in and by the haunted and haunting

Sound of the blinds rattling. 

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020