today you would've been 65
how much you've missed

you liked to joke that your birthday was on the longest day of the year so that you'd have more time to enjoy it and i wish that we'd had more time to enjoy you, too

took out the trash this morning
sandals on the red, dusty driveway
the scent of wildfire smoke somewhere in the air
as summer sets a shattering scene

a small raccoon dead at the bottom of the can
as i drop the bag aside and gently tilt the can to let it slide
onto the driveway

what did it know in its life?
what did it think as the cover closed?
what did its mother think when it set off for the last time

later on in my own home
roof over my head and curtains drawn
i think of it again and i wonder
does it all end just like that?

la luna
once nothing but a child's dream
staring at the stars
third-hand telescope on the front walk
hoping and praying
that the city lights won't be
too bright to block out the constellations

so it was
a romance with weightlessness
on the Cyclone at Coney Island
to learn to love the feeling
of hearts in throats
and the racing pulse
and the butterflies in the stomach

dream of love
a wife lost young to cancer
and belief brought no clear answers
but still resolution and commitment
with hearts in throats
and the rasping choke
of losing everything he loved

to seek heaven
a boy born to fly learned to be
in command and learned to be
in control as the thrusters push and learned to be
cool under pressure as the world below
gets further and further away
if he stayed up here would that be alright

where have i gone?

i wasn't here yesterday
or at least not the same me
i've been exchanging
glances for limerence and
*** for pleasure and
dreams for the hollow
vacuous entombment that is
what we become -

i'd never been that close
to anything before

did i tell you i loved you enough?

the door at the edge of the kitchen where he came back because he forgot his glasses after spending the night on the floor of what used to be our room

i know

terse words exchanged from opposite sides of the dinner table as you look flummoxed that i'm the one answering the call and i tell you to get lost

i lost

the laughter of others when the boxes were packed and the keys left behind and those godawful words "now you can move in"

i cried

a satellite dish on the roof
of my grandfather's shed
sings to the stars

who will provide the countermelody?

i took you to a place on the beach
that my dad took me as a boy
to share these sweet things with you

it all means something.

there is a waterfall in the woods
in northwest indiana
where once the river ran so dry
you could look down into the riverbed
and see the roots of trees
gasping, begging for the water's return

we stood in the rain the next day
as the wind whipped petals
off the branches of the maple trees
and in the downburst
i fell so deeply love with you

will you sing with me?

there is no use in weeping
over things left unsaid
if they were better off
on the radio waves
bouncing down to the satellite
into the screen inside your head
to replay the crescendo to failure
in the moments before collapse