Diane Melby
Salon for Creative Expression
The Long Island Railroad
delivers me after your mourners leave
for cake in the parish hall and dirt
from your grave leaves shadows
where I’ve swiped my eyes.
This is the church where we met,
two girls in pleated skirts, giggling
behind nuns with habits too rigid to bend.
The island still wears its strange perfume—
salt, seaweed and creosote, weather-worn
dock splintered into suntanned thighs.
We watched ferries score the bay, laughed
through the burn of strawberry wine.
You wondered where my sun would set,
no surprise I landed in the mountains,
driven by the songs we sang, your Mustang
screaming along with Rocky Mountain Way—
high, high, so high we’d shout every time.
All the years I wandered, we remained bound
like rubber ball to wood, I stretched
the band thin, you held the paddle tight.
And now this—
you’ve exchanged your blankets
for this shroud of sand and silt
left me untethered
no one here to bring me home.
Diane Melby
First published by The Poetry Society of Virginia, Poetry Virginia, 2026.
Artist's Statement
I have been a writer ever since third grade, where I had a teacher who encouraged creative writing. Writing has never been a conscious decision. That is, I never had a dream of becoming a poet. It simply unfolded. The more poetry I read by various authors, the more I wanted to write. My early poems were attempts to imitate well-known poets, unsuccessfully for the most part. As I matured, my efforts have been far more fulfilling, both for me and my readers. It is my desire that my poems will “speak” to someone.
Every poem has a triggering spark. What triggers a poem for me? Just about anything. An idea pops into mind, or I experience an event or circumstance, uncover a memory, or see something intriguing, or overhear a comment, or experience an upwelling of an emotion. They all end up in poems. It may necessitate a dozen or more drafts for a poem to be complete.
I don’t have a “style”. Few of my poems rhyme. Free verse is my chief forte, but I don’t adhere to a specific pattern or meter.
The bottom line is that I can’t not write. It’s a compelling urge, a tugging at my spirit that won’t let go.