Goodbye, Jersey
(inspired by Goodnight, Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown.)
The sun is high
The air is still
And everything that will be,
will.
Cars racing on the GSP
and the lady conductor asking, “tickets, please.”
Summer, trees, hydrangeas
Cool ocean breeze and jughandles
Every town in descending order,
and memories calling
from every corner
Goodbye, Jersey
Goodbye, Shore
Goodbye all the Wawa stores
Rt 35 & 36
Radio stations’ eclectic mix
Beginning in Red Bank, on the Navesink River
and traipsing around the state together,
Gingerbread houses in Ocean Grove
Twin Lights beaming from above,
Like an old, cherished love,
“You have not changed!”
(never will!)
Yet, the train moves forward, still.
Goodbye, Jersey
Goodbye, Al
Goodbye horses, farms, and cows
Goodbye ocean breeze, and salty air
and Jersey Girls everywhere.
Copyright 2012 Lupe Eyde-Tucker. All rights reserved.
Ocean Grove, NJ
I did not write ‘Goodbye, Jersey’ during NaPoWriMo 2013. I wrote it last summer after visiting New Jersey, specifically MoCo, and reconnecting with friends and places where I grew up. It was a great trip, and on the last day, as I was waiting for the train from Red Bank to take my mother and I to Newark Airport, all of the sudden the first lines of this poem just popped into my head, and I started writing it, literally on the train schedule. As we took our seats, verses and phrases kept coming to me, and I pulled out my notebook and started just writing it all out. It was a spontaneous poetic moment which I am still awed by. A couple of months later the entire state was slammed by Superstorm Sandy, and Monmouth County was devastated.
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator raised in New Jersey and Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is the winner of the 2021 Unbound Book Festival Emerging Poet Award, the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize, and in 2018 was selected as an AWP Writer to Writer Mentee by poet Maggie Smith. In 2022 her poetry manuscript, "Eucalyptus," was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. The manuscript explores her Sephardic Jewish ancestry and bi-cultural heritage.
Not Enough Poetry 
Lupe, What a great Poem!! Thanks for sharing it. ♥
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Thank you Ian, I am glad you enjoyed it. It is ironic how just months afterwards the whole area was just devastated in the hurricane.
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great rhythm & any child would love the shape on the page.. the goodbye theme too –
the child in me loves this especially:
The sun is high
The air is still
And everything that will be,
will.
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Very well narrated… the voices and the images are splendid. 🙂
-HA
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Very effective use of repetition and a great sense of place. Thanks for sharing this little visit to the Jersey Shore.
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Thank you Victoria! I love today’s theme, some of my favorite poems are “children’s” picture books. I will still write a new one because I love the idea, but I have had such a terrible headache all day …
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This is a very cool rememberance.. and the refrains make it like a little song. very nice.
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Thanks Bjorn, I have another poem I am working on that goes with todays theme. Unfortunately I have a terrible headache at the moment, so no writing today. I posted a link to this poem because it is inspired by a famous children’s book here in the US called Goodnight, Moon. Some of my favorite poems are from children’s picture books. Someone commented on your poem that it could be a children’s book, and I agree!
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Sounds like a recent true happening…told so a young person would love the sounds and actions in the story 😉
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ha. well played against good night moon…it has the rhythm…movie is not easy, leaving so much behind…i quit the job i had when we had kids because i did not want to travel and miss their lives….
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Thanks Brian. You are right, I hated leaving NJ! 🙂
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Excellent Poem! Loved the gait and colour 🙂
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loved this and what a wonderful remembrance of a summer at the shore – K
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Glad you liked it K!
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