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?

 

 

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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.

 

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      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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