First Loves Die Hard

I visited the beach
I used to go when I was a teenager.
It’s not desolate,
but it is depressing.
There must be billions of tiny mussel shells
crushed in a two mile path –
the road to Necropolis.
This represents the lives of how many bivalves?
I made love once or twice here
about thirty feet off shore
in the barely early nineties.
I was eighteen,
she was seventeen.
First loves die hard
but alas, that memory is long dead.
Thought I could tear down a mountain
one rock at a time.
Shale is deceptive
and it’s brittle,
like ancient paper.
There were trees ready to fall
right atop my head –
how would I explain that one to Joshua?
“See son, you can move mountains!”
I think the point was well taken.
We walked past the point of depression.
I used to do ten miles each way here,
now seven – hundred feet breaks my heart.
We stop at the old Playhouse across the street,
where I met my first love.
There was very nearly a tear
because first loves die hard,
but die that memory did
a very long time ago.
I was going to flee to Alaska
wasn’t that the arrangement?
But she never came back,
at least not as I remembered her.
I was stuck with luggage in one hand
and two broken hearts in the other.
Now I know it’s called a
“May to September romance.”
I wish I knew that at the time.
May have saved me grief.
There’s a ton of finality in my life.
The sand, the lake, and all the dead fish seem grey.
The only thing with any color
is that dead mussel road.
There’s a ton of depressing finality here
cause first loves die hard.