Wild Spirits

 Eileen Carney Hulme   

Night drifts

and I feel the breeze

of summers past

the bittersweet of

orange blossom

circlets of soul-wounds

old energies in motion

Back then

we were always

seconds from disaster

explorers, searching for some truth

thunderstruck with longings

zapped with amber kisses

dizzy on a never-ending fairground wheel

I wish

I’d kept the gifts;

handcrafted bracelet and ring from India

the American photographs

when you were seventeen,

your letters, chalk and cheese of moods

but mostly the passion, serial hopes

and that one day sat on the dunes

shuffling the sunset, not mouthing the words.

©2006 Eileen Carney Hulme.  Reproduced with permission of the author.  This poem was highly commended by Ian Parks as an entry to the 2006 City of Derby Poetry Competition.