One Poem by David Alec Knight

 

I Knew Your Beauty Then

I.

 

I scrape and scrawl through my threnody

for first love because I must: love past

is forever revenant.

 

Decades past, my heart was

a favourite stranger of mine, until

I knew you and in the knowing we

made familiar of the estranged:

I looked in your eyes, lost

in the blue roses flecks

to bright ebon pupils shining.

 

My heart then, had me believe with

alchemical urgency my first love was

going to be my last and that was

a pressure on you too soon enough

to suffocate what we were then.

 

II.

 

Summer nights, I walked you home: cutting

through the lot of Zellers, you always climbed

in a cart and I drove you round making,

taking, crazy turns, sudden wheelies.

You would laugh and scream, mock gasp,

giggle screech, "Keep the front wheels up!"

 

I would feel the weight of your leaning back

against me, the warmth of your shoulders,

my eye at your ear, near cheek on cheek

in hurry hasten speed the narrowing gyre

around lamplight after lamplight making

our own breeze in placid sultry night --

your Ambrosian redolence I breathed

in deep, and pressed against you,

making, taking, lunatic turns,

abrupt grocery cart gyrates.

 

III.

 

Under tree cover one evening,

it was you laughing who

pushed me to the ground.

 

"Turnabout is fair play," you laughed.

... All is fair in love and whatever, I said.

"So, is this 'love', or is it 'whatever'?"

 

I felt then like a housecat that darted

outside, only to look for the way back in.

But, only for one slim moment:

I knew your beauty then.

 

IV.

 

We were sure they laughed at us

at the lake, wrote us off with derision

as some goth slash punk rock chick

with your fatigues green and black outfit

and your carefully styled crazy hair,

and the incongruously short haired

heavy metal kid with a jean jacket patch

of a heavy metal band nobody heard of

that we knew of, except for you.

 

We looked up wool pulled summer skies,

as we made angels in the sun hot sand,

touched each other's fingers, wing to wing.

 

V.

 

I laugh now, thinking of the end.

When you were through with me you

just couldn't say so, so you sent me

home one day with a mix tape,

all of Side A being five times in a row

"I Started Something I Couldn't Finish"

by The Smiths, with nothing on Side B.

I was confused when I played it -

I assumed you really liked that song.

 

"Did you have time to play the tape?"

... Yeah. The song played like five times.

"Well, uh, what did you think of it?"

... I liked the guitarist; not the singer.

 

It sounded like you dropped the phone

and reeled it back up by the curl cord:

you had to break it down for me in the end.

 

VI.

 

I have loved since those days of you,

for longer and with more maturity,

but first awkward beautiful love

may never be forgotten.

Summer nights under

moon shadow trees,

and sand angel days

remain and haunt.

 

I knew your beauty then.

But now, when I think of

the malignancy that ravaged

a once Rubenesque form,

the erosion of your shape

before oversoon passing,

I shiver to my marrow.

David Alec Knight grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada.

He includes his middle name in his pen name as a means of disambiguation, his first and last name being fairly common. It is in response to being ignorantly perceived as a pretension by others that he wrote  the poem "Disambiguation".

In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry, The Heart Is A Hollow Organ, soon followed. His second book of poetry, LEPER MOSH, was published by Cajun Mutt Press in 2022. It featured his artwork on the cover. Cajun Mutt Press would also feature a portfolio of his artwork online, as well as publishing his first full color comic story online, WRATH: The Masks We Wear.

Recent poems have appeared in Verse Afire, Cajun Mutt Press Featured Poet, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Medusa's Kitchen. Anthology appearances include By The Wishing Tree, Poets For Ukraine Volume 1, Love Lies Bleeding, Phantom Parade, and The Cajun Mutt Press Halloween Anthology Zine 2022.

David sees dark and light around him in equal measure and that is reflected in his poetry, whether exploring working class themes, neurodivergence, addiction, urban living, our conflict with Nature, and the effects all these things have on relationships.

David works full-time in Long Term Care.