Next Time
The best time of my imagination
was spent in great anticipation
of spending my adult lifetime with you.
But lifetime was elusive,
whispered moments were intrusive,
and pathways led where neither of us knew.
Years absorbed the measures
of our escapades for pleasures.
You went away and then I moved on, too.
We met again along life’s way,
a surprise phone call and a visit one day,
you proposed that I spend my life with you.
But I had a new fascination,
another figure of my imagination,
I hoped could sweeten the bitterness that grew.
I allowed you to embrace our daughter,
and prove that you could become a good father,
but I sent you home to the life and wife you knew.
Years passed again and we both grew old.
You were battling cancer, or so I was told.
I wanted to say I was sorry for what you went through.
I picked up the phone to call and explain,
but hung up to keep from intruding again.
Your family should spend the last moments of life with you.
You visited me just before midnight
to give me your love before taking flight.
I felt you depart this life and the moments we knew.
You watched me and kissed me on the forehead
as a slept with my lover in the bed,
another lover in the line of lovers who
I imagined could somehow take your place
and sweeten the loss of your embrace,
but a figure of my imagination wasn’t you.
I wonder, if I’d taken you up on the offer
to spend a lifetime with you and our daughter
if my soul would be at rest by saying I do.
I wish that we could live life over.
I’d be yours forever, you’d be more than my lover,
and cancer could not live in the life we knew.
I say Yes to next time and a chance to amend
mistakes made. When I come to the end
of this life, let’s begin life together anew.
Marjorie Williams-Cooper, in addition to being a poet and visual artist, has been a trained contralto soloist, performing classical music, African American spirituals, and Brazilian bossa nova. She began a career as a college professor in 2003 and is currently completing a Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change. She grew up in the inner-city of St. Louis, Missouri, and lived there through the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In 1977, she moved with her three children to Denver, Colorado, and became an army wife and religious leader. A mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, she now lives in New Jersey with her family.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 