Anniversary

Its all coming back
the last year in a water drop
on the tip of a spout
from the water cooler

The friends who arrived,
The friends who departed,
and the one or two new ones.
The best gift--old friends resurfacing.

I think that the cancer is gone
now we can focus on the next level of healing
a wholistic approach --
the body and the mind
most importantly the soul

How He Died

Not with lively grandchildren tossing frisbees,
shaking hula-hoops across a greener lawn.
Not with friends recalling poignant stories
to a flower-crowded church as mourners mourn.

But with a passionless son leading the awkward chill.
an estranged wife once beaten barely alive
a weeping granddaughter he entered as a child,
Descendants, searching for the correct emotion, arrive.

As the son and his son embrace beside his open grave,
knowing without speaking that one will die first
and rather soon. Whoever it will be, will leave
a hole so wide the world could pass unnoticed.

and I who have learned nothing from this journey,
watch you descend, with one eye moist the other dry.

Lot's Wife

She had no name, she was property
until that glance reduced her to salt
a stain on the fabric of history
if curiosity were her only fault

then she must have been a poet,
whose righteous husband offered daughters
to enemies before deflowering both
so unfurl the centuries and watch her

change costumes, customs, names and faces
betrayed by friends, raped by gangs
scorched at the stake, sold as a slave,
declared a witch, tried, and hung

until she steps from a cafe in Leningrad
tucking her blouse in a thick waist, she glances
back to describe the circumstances
that drove other women mad

Recounting in lurid detail the pillars of flame,
collapsing causeways, Trains tremble
past peasants plowing old fields
husbands and sons are tortured again

She should have never looked back
she should have turned to salt like the rest
she could have left for Paris
never once turning to witness the wreck

or reopen the wounds of her nation. But poets
seldom make good citizens. Their heritage
is to survey and record the wreckage
with the passion of one possessed

So she wanders deserted streets, over and over
who never averted her eyes or chose to fled
articulating through parched lips, desperate for fluid
I am she who turned back, I am Ahkmatova.

Marriage

We are bound by this deed
a dried corsage
yellow parchment and dead
friends still manage
to hold me to you, dear,
distant mirage

Now force or torture me, Delores
from my silence
Return in your white dress
Bearing violence.

Resurfacing

When she boards a train back to New York
to remind me that an ambivalent life
seldom crashes perfectly into place
regardless of the countless foxhole prayers
and promises to lesser gods

When she casually hints
that I should follow him to the ledge and beyond
and ask questions while fishing for compliments
and don't be surprised if all catch I is
more questions and minnows

And some answers should be structured without emotion
even though every syllable of every answer
is posed and sickening sweet

because lacking emotion is needed
to fill the space between two people
when there is nothing else
but air between

So ignore her warnings and lead with this line,
past the mustard colored barns,
and suburban tract housing and new brides,
round with the promises of the first child

as the train enters the concrete
blue and green of Penn Station
in this post apocalyptic City
you still call home

Medical Update 3

I'm getting better

I'm fine today

I really am

Between

Somewhere between the boy and the man
floating between one drink and drunk
we push the speed limits while we can
angling the curves in your truck.

Your hand rests between the gunlock and my shoulder
as we speed from the town of Mount Olive
I awake from this glorious dream, older
and unexpectedly in love.

We travel between late April and June
on that highway between 20 and death
I stumble, say "I need you" too soon.
You smile through a nervous laugh

Radio static between Madonna and salvation
rises as the fuel needle drops below E
I search the street for a gas station
and an arm that no longer surrounds me

The last mile rushes between silence and madness
while intentions sputter, then careen
among your lowest priorities, and sadness
drops me somewhere in between.

revised December 2008