~*Catt's Farewell To Denton*~

~Catt's Farewell To Denton~
Spring 2002

By Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein

The dying sun glares in our faces
And the wind will be colder tonight
The winding road faces far lonelier places
Rambling away from the light.
We are trading complacency's comfort
For the challenge in finding new ways
But familiar voices that question our choices
Whisper, and wish us to stay

So we pause for a time, on the summit
And regard, in the westering glow,
All the green and the blue and the shallow and true
Of the lives we had both come to know
And this comfort we offer behind us:
Though absent, we do not forget
And though distance may part, with a sting in the heart,
You have given us little regret

For the things that might be are but shadows
And remembrance is weathering stone
And the lonely may strive to create them a tribe
But inside of our skins we're alone
Still, the stone of my memory is painted
With angels of shimmering hue
And their eyes, and their smiles, their stories and styles
Look exactly like each one of you.

I will now give the sunset my shoulder
And take the cool twilight in hand
Set my wings in a glide and entrust that the tide
Leave me standing wherever I land.
For life's not about destinations
And no one can guess Destiny's hand,
So you laugh, and you cry, until one day you die
And then we might all understand.

*****

I'd had the bones of this poem lying around for literally years before I moved from Denton, Texas to Troy, New York. I'd had a sort of morbid fascination with farewells ever since my Tolkein obsession in the 8th grade (and every grade since then, I might add.) There's a sort of reverence in having the right way to say goodbye to the past. Like a eulogy, or a spell to lay phantoms to rest, and allow your eyes to focus on the road ahead without the whispering distraction of regrets at your shoulder. Okay, so it doesn't really work that way. But I still say it ought to!

I left behind in Texas some of the dearest friends I'd ever made in my life. To this day I do not regret having moved; the ONLY thing I miss about Texas is the people whom I left there. They should all move to New York.