Go Slow, Leonard Cohen, by Tricia Marcella Cimera

Go Slow, Leonard Cohen
 
I had a dream Leonard Cohen
was my first and I was his last.
Go slow don’t hurt me, I whispered.
Go slow don’t kill me, he warned.
He taught me why the yellow dog
howls when the pink rose blooms
in the dark of night while the rain
runs in rivulets down the window.
He showed me that sometimes I
would be the dog, sometimes I
would be the rose. But both of us
were always the rain. And to
go slow. The end would come
soon enough.
 
​Tricia Marcella Cimera

This poem was inspired by listening to Leonard Cohen's last album, You Want It Darker. It was first published in Autumn Sky Poetry.

Tricia Marcella Cimera will forever be an obsessed reader and lover of words. Look for her work in these diverse places: Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Foliate Oak, Fox Adoption, Hedgerow, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones, Yellow Chair Review, and elsewhere.  She has a micro collection of water-themed poems called THE SEA AND A RIVER on the Origami Poems Project website.  Tricia believes there’s no place like her own backyard and has traveled the world (including Graceland).  She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois / in a town called St. Charles / by a river named Fox.