1951
this is a poem
about missing
about arms needing to reach
out to brush grass from your back,
telling you everything you will ever
need is here, will always be here
and green & budding like spring
and you not quite believing this
*
about a voice, a throat pink
and smooth, speaking of Betty,
the dancer, clicking her heels
at Bar Harbor to Rosemary Clooney’s
“Beautiful Brown Eyes”
or Jonnie Rays “Cry”
about eyes picturing a ripe summer,
telling her she is beautiful without
speaking, thinking of a rose,
instead offering a white daisy
“love,” you say “ is all about opportunity”
*
about words so far apart they are
more like fireflies, blinking messages
and you saying after the music stops,
“let’s go lean against my car and look
at the stars until we both go blind”
*
about tongues and red licorice
and how they sweet and curl
and how you still liked both,
even after forty-seven years
of marriage
*
this is a poem
about missing
all these things
A GOOD DAY TO DIE
(i)
October evenings in Wisconsin
are more like spent wood
burnings, are more like living
near the late summer Chippewa River
and breezes cross water as softly
as an old woman’s failing breath
(ii)
by Friday i want her
kneaded into wheat bread,
set on a warm window sill
covered with a damp towel,
allowing her to rise
in the morning to feed
me one last time
(iii)
by Sunday she couldn’t see
me anymore; it was raining
and i watched my words,
pale as newsprint,
blending together
(iv)
a blue carnation,
white chrysanthemums
all relative, withering
in lieu of last rites