Accompany Me
Move with me at sun-up; through my mourning,
On sundered footpaths no longer;
Hand in virile hand, untrussing yearning,
Your eventual fate a blur.
Carry proud suntanned muscles upon your frame house surly,
As a cloak of serendipity with verve.
The pitches, brads and horsefeathers are your concern
No longer; but a testament you earned.
Accompany me; in slumber sweetly;
To waltz under a forest canopy sunlit
By dappled Darwinism, free from grit.
Cast to the ground rightly, the binds of suffrage; dear!
And if I wake to cupboards bare, remind me
With a kind soliloquy,
Somebody walks beside me and inside me.
Be damned the adverse throes, here!
Somewhere, someway, sometime, won't you
Promise dear; make your presence known to me,
(As once your hammer thwacked in time
To fleeting life), if only in my dreams?
One Task, Revisited
Starlings and titlarks
Bob greetings to each other.
Partake in barren spoils;
Yammering at the meager winter
Offerings of the year-end yard
While I turn a rag
Through a tumbler.
The observer, the watch woman.
Beyond the smudged pane,
The recycling bin at the curb
Is a Kelly hue of hobo green.
A compliment in the snow
That smacks of condescension
Beneath the pointed accusing limbs
Of the slumbering Maple.
The Pollyanna plow has half-concealed this receptacle.
Water floods my inflamed knuckles hotly;
A sublime arthralgic remedy.
Mugs knock elbows under the spray.
Suds release kaleidoscopic bubble spheres
So miniscule, so fragile, floating purposeful,
Rising, popping, around my sentient countenance.
The repetitive tabby on the counter
Bats the faucet stream in two.
There is a rhyme
To this sequence of events;
This dish done
Shall be done again.
Meandering transients,
These unconscious thoughts
Of silent you.
Your physical body now set free-
From the constraints of the suffering.
The conjob of hope
Now a clinging vine pruned away;
Revealing pillars in disrepair, shrouded before.
Physical remnants of the you,
Inside the container
Awash in the blue flickers;
in the adjacent room.
Water burbles
Over the aluminum basin.
Sings with self-assurance;
Chants in its sensuous brogue.
I am mindful
Of the warm blood
That flows over and around
My rejuvenated fingers; knuckles.
Turning off the spray,
One task revisited,
I pause to consider
Through the smeared glass
Separating me from the nameless cold,
The silver-tongued snowflakes
In their silent serenade.
No two the same, as once were you.
Life Going On
Miscellaneous distractions.
Cracker crumbs between and below my breasts.
Unswept floorboards trailing into dusty corners.
Rooting in my orange wallet for a dollar or two
To tip the grocery deliveryman.
Life going on.
You and I walking through
A light mist, across the pavement.
The smell of a storm in the electric air.
The familiarity of discussing mundane things with you.
Me, waking at two a.m. from that dream.
Life going on.
A supine beast, yawning, sprawled along the length
Of the back of the faded couch.
Worried parakeets pecking spent seed hulls
From the newspaper on the bottom of the cage.
The cut on my finger. Your smashed picture, the one
With the cigarette dangling off your bottom lip.
Bathing for fifteen minutes with a bar of white soap,
That floats, melts in swirls around my body.
Putting away the food, into its various places.
Saving the plastic bags for later.
Filling the seed cups and metal bowls for the pets.
Sweeping up scattered glass shards.
Unbargained for surprises.
A single white hair in each of my scant eyebrows.
Dry hands with patchy brown spots.
The dust from you, once a man- not just a memory,
Inside a tacky green ceramic jug
On top of the entertainment center.
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