York on Yorkread

Mavourneen

April 4, 2008

I call her Julie My Love because it is true. Across a dozen Dickensian years, we have known both the best and the worst of times. I am blessed to have her, and may God and our dearest friends strike me down with pots and pans if or when I screw this bliss up.

We all know it’s possible, and some would say probable, because I lack something. No, not that. It’s that function in my mind that should push the red button: “Don’t say it,” “Don’t post it,” “Don’t go there.”

If the Navy SEALs devised an emotional endurance test for love, it might be me.

So don’t tell her anything, because I want to tell you about another girl.

I wrote poetry once. I still do, but without the muse of youth, with its inherent heartache and loss, iambic inspiration is an itinerant friend that doesn’t come around much anymore.

The first of the few poems I was proud of was called Mavourneen. It was the end of the ’80s, Grunge was coming, and I was just hitting my teenage stride.

I wrote it on a yellow legal pad and archived it on computer before the pad disappeared. Years later, a hard drive crash erased the complete poem form existence. There are now only a few verses extant, the opening among them.

Silken child of hyacinth hue
Aestival image
Blithely draped
In the pool side luxury
Of sun day afternoons

She was Jill Running Bear (another York-made moniker.) We didn’t attend the same high school, but that was about the duration of our relationship, which was always ambiguous at best.

There was passion and apathy, cruelty and concern. But we never kissed. We were never involved. We were just young, pulsing with pain and elation.

Then graduation came. A few years later we met for a meal, and traded an e-mail or two, but that was it. End of story.

But yesterday, I posted my high school senior portrait because I had nothing to say. And now there’s a comment from an author I recall, by the name of Running Bear.

I don’t remember you having this particular hairstyle. Perhaps my memory is fading.

I complained in that post that my blog doesn’t make money, but to connect with old friends is value enough.

Now I can finally ask: Jill, do you have a copy of Mavourneen? (And how has your hair changed?)

Jill Running Bear


3 Comments

  1. Running Bear on April 4, 2008 3:24 PM

    Mavourneen
    “Summer”

    Silken child of hyacinth hue
    Aestival image
    Blithely draped
    In the poolside luxury
    Of sun day afternoons

    Calm
    In the cool complacence
    Of mediocrity
    As the young boys
    Looked at you and grew
    Up by the milky thighs

    Absinthe eyes
    Made them drunk and wanton
    Speed car drivers
    And football thugs
    Pretty, young sons
    In the still satin nights
    Gaining favour
    With circus tricks
    And dying flowers

    Cradled in velvet kisses
    They bled
    Tears and romance
    Making sanguine
    Summer eves
    Soft eternities
    For the iniquity
    Of chance.

  2. julie on April 7, 2008 8:05 AM

    And so it begins…

  3. Jeremy on April 7, 2008 11:27 AM

    …until it ends.

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