Evening downtown,
listening carefully to a poem
read aloud in a coffee house -
sounds like an atom bomb.
     The world isn't ready.

The forest.
Fern and flower standing,
bending in sunlight toward it
like desperate souls
in their one tired moment
of beauty and grace.

I stand above a geranium,
kneeling as I pluck it
from the light.

So, you've been to Venice,
 kissed at sunset on the gondolas,
  sipped Merlot at
   Ristorante Albergaccio.
    You're very well-read,
     you know Tennyson and Tolstoy,
    Fitzgerald and Faulkner
   ("Always dream..."
  tattooed on your rib).
 You lived in museums for a year,
  you spoke with Van Gogh,
   his ear turned toward you as
    you crawled among the Irises.
     My dear, it is impossible
    that you are a realist.
   It is impossible that you
  speak not of love.
 It is impossible
that you have forgotten.

When I am dead and gone,
as the final note of the song
     fades and
the next ensemble takes stage,
may my spirit be resurrected
     among sprightly friends,
for that is the crowd I played for,
and the music never ends.

I don't forget that I love you
when we disagree.
My dear, I have learned humility
through my shortcomings.
Sometimes I sympathize with Pluto;
once a planet, taken seriously,
orbiting mysteriously
at the edge of what is known.
Now, demoted to little more
than a frozen rock
somewhere out there beyond care,
only locatable
by its relation to Neptune.
My love, I am estranged by you,
though I dare not speak it directly
for fear that I might
plant a seed of fault in you -
a **** that is hard to uproot,
I know.
So, you can go on being Neptune -
I'll stay at your limits
and hope you'll turn to me and smile.

June 19, 2019.
     CNN headline:
"Trump vows to cure cancer
and AIDS if elected to second term."
     Watching this on a television
     in a second floor hospital room,
     I ripped the IV and oxygen tubes
     from my body and danced
     into the elevator.