Poetry Friday Challenge: The Aubade

We’ve done the aubade, and Wilbur, so I thought I’d combine them and turn it into a challenge.

In Richard Wilbur’s “Late Aubade,” the morning departure of a lover has already been staved off. It’s just a matter of how long he can sustain the post-coital languor. Love has a lot in common with being lazy — the bed is equally important to both.

I thought I’d try to write my own aubade — since Wilbur’s started late, I thought I’d start mine early, just before waking up. There’s no convincing a lover to stay here when in a sense she’s already left — with the darkness, with the dream, with the end of a romantic story; especially if, unlike Wilbur’s mistress, her loyalties lie with the sun!

So my attempt follows; if you accept the challenge, please post your own in the comments here (or a link to it on your blog)!

Early Aubade

by Wes

Now I feel the intrusion of the sun,
And your backwards glance against the glare

I was dreaming about the movies,
The projector beaming at the wall

We hold hands before the fire,
The drums beat for the entranced wood

We do our lines for the moon and crickets,
And kiss in closeup against the sky

We dance on the lawn,
And laughing, get some steps wrong

The celluloid burns a little and peels your face
Which I try to press back down

But time staggers on the wheel
In undone loops, darkness settles in

Now there’s just your warmth, and I realize
We cannot see what we are

Fleeing through the night-rain without looking back,
Under a rising umbrella

To my car, where the pistons hum
And keep the world going, around us

The day you went back there,
I chased you through the void

The flames chanting at my back,
I found you in a bright-empty room

Standing at attention before the sun,
Turning from a wall of undressed window

To say get up, sleepyhead,
The day has just begun

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