One poem by Doug Bolling

Brevity


                Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

                                        -- Neruda, Twenty love Poems


Joanna, here where sea
swallowed you
as I rushed from the darkness
into this greater dark.

Believe love you said
only three nights ago
as we talked away
the hours at the
Bistro of the Mirages.

I remember the incoming tide
the trembling of the pier
holding up the world
we two trusted
before the shadow fell
between us.

The poems we have spoken
to one another you said
they are the wings
that fly through the door
guarding the soul.

And now you are gone
into the distance,
the many faces of you
suddenly no more,

solitary seagull

never to return to land
leaving me behind
to forget,
to remember.

Doug Bolling's poetry has appeared widely in literary reviews including Blue Unicorn, Xanadu, Illuminations, Visions International, Lalitamba, Tribeca Poetry Review, Basalt, The Inflectionist Review and Wallace Stevens Journal among many others. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations and has taught at several colleges and universities. Currently, he lives outside Chicago in Flossmoor, Illinois.