We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

7.4.21

All These Years Later

 All These Years Later


A poet I first met

on MySpace – the old

MySpace, before it was

bought and wrecked –

starts a facebook group

for the old MySpace poets.


A bright inspiration!

We swarm to reunion.

‘Who else is still around?’

we ask each other, somewhere

in the middle of the first

glad greetings. And,


‘Who have we lost?’

The list of the dead begins.

And grows. And grows.

I myself add two dear names,

later remember a third.

They were our most vibrant!


Many who join, I don’t even

recognise, never got to know. 

In its heyday, MySpace 

was crawling with poets

proliferating: with what joy

we kept finding each other.


I’m quiet in the new group.

‘I can’t help it,’ I say 

to myself only –

‘I am falling through space.’

(Pun inapplicable.)

You can’t go home again.



Poetic Asides prompt, Day 6: A Change and/or Don't Change poem. I'm not quite sure if this is either or both. A change, and then another change to try and correct the first....


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