You were my life's great distraction,
from the tedious ins-and-outs of seasons,
the still summers and the silent snows.

From childhood's great terrors,
slipping under in the swimming pool,
from the restless rubbings of the twenties:

When my soul seemed too large
for my ribcage.

When I bottomed out in my thirties,
penniless, a slipped clutch in my car
and nothing but mustard in the refrigerator,
I remained for you.

I quit drinking when you threatened to
leave me on the kitchen floor.

That is the first bullet-point
on the endless ledger of debts
I owe to you.

And though we were fruitless
(genetically speaking)
your perfect DNA will remain in the soil's pores

and your calcium will marry the grass roots,

so that this great, dull planet
might become less ugly.