Sometimes memory will widen

and allow me to reach back  

and retrieve pieces of my life

like how, decades ago, you 

were the Oscar to my Felix, 

the electric to my acoustic, 

and how, in summer, we’d 

gladly take up each day, walking 

miles to meet in mid-morning light 

past a landscape where we could 

hear the earth breathing behind the 

occasional fence-line or flatbed 

flecked with rust, the wheel-less 

cider mill and a smattering of haunted 

barns leaning away from wind 

to meet up with friends and the

chance encounter with adolescent girls

where so much and yet so very little 

happened, and never knowing what, 

precisely, we were all searching for, 

though eventually you moved on 

with certain steps and I was left 

unsure what to make of that particular

hurt, while memory slowly dulled 

the fellowship of us like those unfurling 

fields of jeweled air I’d often pass 

on my way home, slowly covering 

whatever remained in late-day shadow.

Bio: A resident of Connecticut, John Muro has authored two volumes of poems – In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite – in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Both volumes were published by Antrim House, and both are available on Amazon and elsewhere. He is a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, a nominee for the Best of the Net and, more recently, a 2023 Grantchester Award recipient. John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Delmarva, Grey Sparrow, New Square, Sky Island and the Valparaiso Review.

Commentary: This poem is a proportionate mix of transience and longing. With its striking (yet temperate) visuals, the poet pines for his friend but the ever-shrinking walls of memory blocks his attempt.