I
What I meant to notice was
your fine hands drumming
on the wheel, the air like grapes
through Danbury to New Haven.
But we were singing, not
the famous song your uncle wrote,
but "Lay Lady Lay" and something
from Fairport Convention.
Like every other Friday at 3 p.m.
you had taken your Compazine
and we were nearly to the hospital
with its halo of elms
II
Long and thin
as a clock hand
ticking twelve
your body lay on our bed.
I place my fingers on your chest,
on the hollow batons
of your ribs.
III
We live north of our fate.
Snow cakes on the porch steps
dense as the air upstairs when I bake
lead bricks and call them bread. Generous,
you eat thin slices with butter and banana.
It is so white in the bedroom,
snowlight cast up from the road.
Your dark brillo hair is like
live wires searching for a signal.
We throw your economics
books to the floor. On the cold sheet
we lay together. The melting snow
is my evidence. Once, you and I,
in a sweat of sexlove, here.
I close my mouth now.
I have confessed everything
to you.
IV
Your mother never played
the grand piano in the living room.
But you played
Rock and Roll radio
and when I called you
on a bet with my friend
Mary Ellen, you knew
Fontella Bass sang "Rescue Me"
in 1965 and how long
she was in the Top 10
and who was #1 before
and after her. Facts like that,
I could count on. Facts like
when you died
you were 29 years old.
"The Harder They Come"
by Jimmy Cliff was at the top
of the charts, followed
by Neil Young "Heart of Gold."
I don't know
what these invisible facts mean.
They comfort me.
V
We tell no one of your prognosis. Cancer
was contagious then. We don't
even say the word. Not to your best friend
Elliot or your mother or my parents.
While you lie in that floating bed
visiting with ghosts,
I sneak out,
have burning ***
with a Viet Nam vet
who knows about death,
and bodies.
VI
I am on a crowded sidewalk.
I think I am dreaming.
It is Sixth Avenue and like two
vast rivers of fish,
people press urgently
north and south.
After seven years, I see your dark
head above the others. You are
looking down, but steadily move
toward me. I am helpless
with hope. You come close.
If I could lift my hand, I would
open my palm on the long
plane of your chest.
Very slow, you raise your head.
You look into my eyes.
Your eyes are brown,
as always.
Like rain you speak to me.
"I will meet you,"
you say, "in the Andes."
Then you disappear.