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Together

The windows of our dawning day
_Let light in through the dew,
But outdoors ambling in cool air,
_I knew that I’d find you.

Close comfort, venturing apart,
_We played our separate games,
Dreaming the dreams that draw each heart
_Toward unacknowledged aims.

I sailed too soon, no longer home
_To go on side by side;
Rarely you came to mind, Jerome,
_Though I felt satisfied.

Allied, aligned as with no other,
_We always reconnected,
But fellowship fell short, my brother;
_Real friendship we neglected.

We wasted opportunities,
_Adrift without a fight;
Imagined earth’s eternities
_Might cure the oversight.

They could have, for you made the move
_When dimmer years had passed,
That gave us twenty to improve
_In pristine vistas vast.

The wonder of living fidelity
_Accompanied holidays;
The wonder of sudden mortality
_Rolled in as breathless haze.

Why speak of mourning, tell how long
_Regret proceeds to pray?
These lips can sing a soothing song,
_Making the best of a day.

The windows of my after age
_Invite your brightness in,
Always with me to assuage
_The misty clouds for kin
Ambling remembrances engage.
_

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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28 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Margaret, this one surprised me with your simple heartfelt homilies emanating from your soul. It was almost like a song that I could sing along. How wonderfully framed was each verse describing your relationship with a person from your childhood from whom you grew apart going separate ways yet always was with you in a sense in your mind and especially on holidays. We all must set aside regrets as you did in your poem and in our case humming a song or listening to oldies as I do on the radio soothes us in the end. This has to be one of your best poems despite all the masterful ones you have crafted.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Roy, your view of the poem’s theme AND your finding the piece songlike are both more significant than you could have guessed when you made this comment. When “Together” was first posted, the final stanza had been inadvertently omitted. Though my music and lyrics are quite different, I did recall a song celebrating the “always” togetherness of children close in age–and you sensed that, without reading my more explicit last lines. The song did not, however, explore the long stretches of life apart, or the regrets that remain. I wrote this because it’s now been twenty years since Jerome’s unexpected death, and the closeness is “always” enough that I still feel it. But as you say, a song is one of the better ways to respond, inviting the brightness back in!

      Reply
  2. Margaret Brinton

    Poetry can often assuage a grief, it is true, Ms. Coats.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Margaret, especially because I believe you know much about writing that kind of lyric.

      Reply
  3. Jeremiah Johnson

    “Imagined earth’s eternities
    _Might cure the oversight.”

    Poignant lines – what is so often assumed and rarely the case. Though I expect that, by God’s grace, Heaven’s eternities have cured many oversights – which is an encouragement to me!

    Reply
    • Dan Davis

      This line struck me as well. Earth’s obvious lack of eternities contrasted with frequently hoping there will be.

      There is great hope in eternity in heaven indeed.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Yes, Dan, we can learn to place our hopes in what is more hopeful! When my brother and I were both just into our thirties, we did not imagine we had exactly twenty earthly years left together. I’m grateful now for his move that gave us those. And I’m more likely to look around and think of the “how long” question when deciding how to spend time with those still here.

    • Margaret Coats

      An encouragement to me, too, Jeremiah. Yet while I am still here on earth, there remains that oversight, those opportunities not taken. The long realization can have a good effect if I take more care to be kind and grateful for others here with me! Newer friendships are precious too, as is the realization that they can be destined for heaven.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Thanks, C. M.! Emily often mentions eternity, and the theme of my poem has likenesses to her “Bequest” and “Eternity is over there” with its “rambling” comparable to my “ambling.” I can’t remember where she speaks of “eternities,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if you do.

  4. Cheryl A Corey

    I think this could qualify as one of your more emotional poems, as it comes from the heart. I enjoyed your word-play/phrasings such as “windows of our dawning day”; “ambling in cool air”; “Dreaming the dreams”; and “Allied, aligned”.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for feeling the emotion, Cheryl. You’ve chosen some of the wordplay most at my heart. “Ambling” was walking with my brother who did nothing in a rush. My children remember getting up for early ambles with their uncle when parents were still asleep. Jerome and I were “allied, aligned” by being very close in age, and holding on to that in ways I hardly know how to explain logically, so the special word choices do what I can.

      Reply
  5. jd

    A beautiful poem I interpret as being from one sibling to another regretting not taking the time to become closer when that time was available. Is there anyone who cannot relate in one way or another? I don’t think so.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Yes, thank you, jd, the poem is both distinctly individual to me and my brother now twenty years deceased–and applicable to just about anyone who’s missed similar opportunities. I’m glad you find it beautiful, and very happy to hear a comment from you!

      Reply
  6. Russel Winick

    Margaret, I truly appreciate your willingness to share a poem that’s clearly from your heart. Thank you!

    Reply
  7. Laura Deagon

    Margaret, this poem is especially beautiful and from my perspective flowed so well. I have to say it created a bittersweet feeling. I bet there are so many people to whom this experience applies.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Yes, thank you, Laura, “bittersweet” is the word for memories like these of my brother. And you are correct, I would say, that many others must have had similar experiences, whether with family members or longtime acquaintances who might have become true friends. There is so often unrealized goodness that we think too little of, while opportunities to develop it are present.

      Reply
  8. Paul A. Freeman

    I was particularly affected by the line ‘The wonder of sudden mortality / Rolled in as breathless haze’.

    Your poem brings to the fore some strong emotions, especially with regards to ‘forgotten’ or ‘neglected’ friends and relatives. Earlier today, an old school friend I recently reconnected with helped me out with an issue, so your poem resonates strongly – as if it was somehow meant to.

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Paul. That line works with the atmospheric images I chose for this poem, contrasting light with dimness created by dampness in the air. You may not have haze rolling in unexpectedly where you live now, but the coastal phenomenon exhibits what seems a sudden stifling of breath. Glad to know the poem resonated with you because of a joyous and useful reconnection with the old school friend!

      Reply
  9. Jeff Eardley

    Margaret, this is a piece straight from the heart, and straight into mine. I always regret not getting on with my older brother, until he was terminal, and by then it was too late. We shared his last months together and I miss him dearly. Lovely to read today. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks so much, Jeff. It’s taken some days to acknowledge you, because I’ve been trying to help a close friend whom I hope is not terminal, but is certainly worse than I expected. It’s a blessing to be able to share time especially when circumstances are troubled, but as you know, it’s different than it would have been earlier. Happy to know the poem touched your heart.

      Reply
  10. Adam Sedia

    This is a poignant ballad of which the main delight (I found) was its unexpected course. When I began, I thought it would be a poem of lost love, and it is to an extent, but it discusses a friendship not ended, but with potential that is never realized. This particular facet of friendship doesn’t seem much discussed in poetry, and I appreciated the uniqueness of the subject. As always, you have a wonderful way with diction – “ambling remembrances” I found particularly attractive.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you so much, Adam. It is a great compliment to find the poem uniquely attractive in approach and diction. Since you mention that last line of closure echoing the “ambling” in the first stanza, let me explain the “extra line.” My brother and I were blessed with 37 years of living close together (17 before I left home, and the 20 spoken of in the sixth stanza), and I found the quatrains ending just as I could shape that unique prime number count. Early known and well known, but too little familiar nonetheless.

      Reply
  11. Warren Bonham

    Beautiful and a great reminder to me that I have some calls I need to make before it’s too late.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Warren, thank you immensely for this comment that I’ve waited so long to answer. You’ve helped me hold a place for two individuals who were acquainted with my brother and might have been able to make a personal reference to him. So “before it’s too late,” I’ll comment on behalf of others whose contact info I no longer have. One couple brought pets to Jerome as a veterinarian, and at his funeral said the animals got “better medical care than we did.” He had special ways of handling sick or injured or scared cats and dogs such that they didn’t resist. I first saw it before he was a veterinary student. One characteristic that will stay “always with me.”

      Reply
  12. Phillip E.

    Thank you for your beautiful and heartfelt poem. Besides it’s more important role of honoring Jerome, it can also invite the reader to reflect on memory. If I am not mistaken, St. Augustine, after having narrated his past, ends his Confessions with a reflection on memory; and this is perhaps a sign that reflection on years past may naturally lead one to reflect on the precious instrument through which one is able to do this. Memory, though bound with the past, is not simply tied to it; but it has a certain power whereby it is able to and touch on all times, thus possessing a kind of eternal quality; for it both asses time gone by in the present moment in which it is engaged, and intimately informs future actions. Though earlier days are “dimmer days” in some way, as you mention, they can also be brighter days in a certain respect, the memory of how we used to be in simpler times shining light on us today, challenging us to regain that innocence or integrity of character we perhaps lost; yet not as though we ought merely to recoup the one or the other with the incipience or immaturity that most likely accompanied it, but to hopefully refine it, God willing, from a position of greater wisdom and grace—or if it is precisely wisdom and grace that was lost, then memory can serve as an encouraging reminder that both are still attainable while we yet walk in this vale of tears.
    Your poignant line Dreaming the dreams that draw each heart/Toward unacknowledged aims suggests to me that what we think on as children can somehow lead us to goals we set for ourselves later in life, whether as a link in a chain or as a foreshadowing of these goals more directly, though we might not ever be aware of this. Then again, when we become men we might, with St. Paul, put away the things of a child; though even in this case, we might envisage these things in some sublimated form if we consider the matter carefully enough.
    Thank you again!

    Reply
  13. Margaret Coats

    Thank you, Phillip, for this magnificently reflective comment on my poem of personal reflections. Memory is indeed the power of the soul that enables thoughts like these (both yours and mine). When I spoke in the poem of “dimmer years,” those were not the early days farthest away, but times of separation in which memory had very little to recollect because of the lack of sensory stimulus (hearing and seeing one another). You are right that earliest times can be the brightest, with unspoiled innocence, when the future still consists of pleasant dreams with aims not yet acknowledged. And you are right as well that memory engages the present. This is why my present poem ends pointedly with “remembrances engage” (the direct object of that subject and verb being “kin” who are most likely to recall remembrances). And of course memory informs a future of greater grace and wisdom (God willing!), emerging from longer experience. As to eternal functions of memory, I say a prayer to the Holy Spirit, asking one of His gifts for each element of the human person. For memory, it asks one of the higher gifts, the intellectual gift of Knowledge. That entails more than the knowledge we collect even in the highly valued memories based on our senses!

    Reply

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