T'would be grim to share a life with me,
    Meets no reminisce with memory,
When on our favorite day of all,
    I'm left with nothing to recall.

Our guests arrive, the altar manned,
    I see you, your heart and your hand,
Held so close then kissed so tight,
    Receding visions of that night.

The pacts, promises that we'd taken,
    I would retain them - I'd be mistaken,
And when we both pronounce "I do",
    I won't remember - it's up to you.

The ones I love and care so dear,
    To those I haven't seen all year,
I cannot see them smile or cry,
    Do not remember our last goodbye,
I cannot hear them laugh nor sing,
    Honest hindsight; I could not bring.

I try so hard to force the brain,
    To conjure visioned love again,
Mirage I see; though do not grasp,
    Reflections fade into the last.
Met face-to-face; we're both alone,
    Who stands before me; now unknown.

What I would give for just a taste,
    To hear their voice; to see their face,
To give them love and watch them grow,
    To see them now; they would not know,
For I can't cherish them, don't they see,
    None will endure to memory.

memories flickering, fading,
    endless ocean waiting, wading,
closest kin and our best lived days,
    lost now; in this minds murky maze

love-shared moments felt together,
    all drift away; with no tether,
currents carry away from shore,
    landless horizon forever more

pitiful buoy thrown overboard,
    to accept presents false reward,
siren-like; drag you down with me,
    engulfing all; this deep, blue sea

While measuring the blueness of the sky,
the figs went stale.
You open your hands to grasp the last fresh ones—
like a prayer,
or a leaf in its senescence.

The heart constricts itself into a void,
like the death of a love
that arrives too late at your door.

Your forgetfulness has misplaced all your memories
somewhere in the house,
and, somewhere you end up—
without trying, but never in exile.

On my father’s house
three slaves and six horses
died when the old stable blazed
a  century and a half ago,
and three union and
two confederate soldiers
slayed each other
in a forgotten skirmish
a few years later.
Their skeletons were found
two years after the war
under an uprooted white pine.
The county let the field return to forest,
except for the old stable.

My father, a nonresident,
cut a dirt road through
the upper quarter,
built a cottage house
over the old stable,
a gate house fifty yards leeward
with a pond in back
and a large windowed manor
that cut a wing between
earth and sky
just beyond
at the edge
of the rocky wrack line to the bay.

Until the houses settled in,
the earth screeched its pain
and revealed its ossified sorrows.
After years this plot
finally  accepted his tranquility.  

My father died and was cremated
far away from this adopted place,
He  returned only because
his will demanded
his celebration of life
take place here.

Except for the family,
who undutifully held
onto their allotted share
of his ashes, the attending
mutes, sobers, wailers and criers
faithfully flung
his cremains in the breeze.
They watched, cried,
bemoaned and wailed
as every speck
refused to settle
and blew out to the bay.

Adrift,
she fishes,
searching a foggy sea,
for a souvenir of long gone years,
and who she used to be

A puppet for you to use as you please.
Each string tied around limbs
Preventing the steps of my free will.
Did I ever have a mouth to speak with?
Or was it you who just drew it on my face?
I believed I was yours. You thought I was yours to take.
Perhaps we both were mistaken.
But this life is no longer mine to live.
So I will let you have it.
I will become the lifeless puppet you needed.
And just maybe,
you won't forget me.