Simply Gone

It is the only cleat on the dock with no boat tied to it.
No thick ropes holding fast to the pier at the end of the day,
and somehow it is your favorite sight. A sign
of things set free. Released. Gone its own way

when others are here to roost. A sign
of forgiveness. A letting go of the one who wounded
you.

They are on their journey. You are on yours.
The scars, if they have not healed completely
now make you more interesting. Survivors always are.

You sit on the pier, your legs dangling
in this one place where nothing is tied. Not wondering
where the boat has gone, happy now simply that they are gone
and you are here, sitting in the sun like a child,

happy in the empty space their leaving has created,
next to the empty cleat, rusted yet somehow
still strong.

About this poem

Written to a writers prompt on “forgiveness” from a poet’s group I am a part of. I rarely write to prompts, but this one seemed a good topic in the reflective mood I have been in the last day or so.

The picture was taken on the fishing pier in Provincetown, Mass.

Tom