Poem by R.M. Dolin, January 27, 2025
The Long Ago of Yesterday
I still taste the tenderness of
sunrise on your touch,
the way you hold me,
or maybe I hold you.
In the end,
does it even ever matter?
The long ago of yesterday lingers
like a tent, alone and isolated on
the rocky edge of waiting for
something that’s already happened.
You came to me in crisis,
taking what’s been hidden
like promises whispered on wind.
Leaving in waves receding from
the pristine sand of a beach
that’s highly traveled
but mostly forgotten.
Tell me you love me,
or that you never did.
At least then my soul
can be at peace,
as if that’s ever even possible.
From the R.M. Dolin novel, “What Is to Be Done.” Jake’s drinking alone and that never ends well. He misses his beloved Emelia who passed three months ago. The more Jake mourns, the more he irrationally wishes Emelia never loved him; at least then the pain of her passing wouldn’t hurt so damn much.
Written while bivouacking on the beach in Brewer’s Bay on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands after a night of drinking local dark rum, playing cards at Nicole’s bar, and toasting with Jimmy, an island native, to beautiful women we once loved and the long ago of yesterday. The campground that was supposed to be here got destroyed in the last hurricane, so the once developed bay is now an overrun tropical forest; so kinda sorta cool. I wrote this poem in one hurried pass at the end of the night as the light from my cellphone battery fades.
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