21 Days/21 Poems: “I Don’t Miss It” by Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is an African-American poet who has published three collections of poetry.  Her third, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The theme is love as I continue with Another 21 Days/21 Poems

I Don’t Miss It

But sometimes I forget where I am,
Imagine myself inside that life again.

Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,
Or more likely colorless light

Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.

And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,
The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke

Climbing the walls while the hours fall.
Straining against the noise of traffic, music,

Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.
And that scamper of feeling in my chest,

As if the day, the night, wherever it is
I am by then, has been only a whir

Of something other than waiting.

We hear so much about what love feels like.
Right now, today, with the rain outside,

And leaves that want as much as I do to believe
In May, in seasons that come when called,

It’s impossible not to want
To walk into the next room and let you

Run your hands down the sides of my legs,
Knowing perfectly well what they know.

– by Tracy K. Smith

Source of Poem.  This poem is from her book, Duende.

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