she would be eighty, or eighty plus one  
her name was Eve, really, she had me
when I was a bucking young mountain man  
only weeks back from that “crazy Asian war”  

now, a prisoner of the prairies,
its harsh daylight dousing my waking dreams of her,
dispersing them downwind, with other melting memories  
I yet hear her English tongue, see her bobbed blonde hair  
against her silk pillow, and feel the warmth of her huge fireplace
and her slender fingers on my shoulders  

twenty four years younger then
than I sit today, what would she say
if I saw her now? would we lie
with each other, or to each other?
what if she has passed, and all that keeps her
here is the faint fire behind me, the embers
speaking in red whispers, of Eve, of yesterday  
and of soft dances in nights
of naked forgetting