She slipped away with no goodbye
No parting gasp or widened eye
One heartbeat she was here, then she was gone.

I didn’t know it was the day
When she would gently drift away-
The nurses said that time was down the road.

For many hours I’d held her  hand
And when I could no longer stand
I sat nearby to read a magazine.

I cannot say with certainty
The moment that her soul leapt free
I feel ashamed and live with secret guilt.

I never should have touched that book
It robbed me of a final look
That might have told me she was on her way.

I had to wait til Laura came
And here her call my Mother’s name
And cry out, O my God - I think she’s gone.

I tell myself it was Mom’s will
To slip away when all was still
But yet I should have stood there at her side.

I might have sensed her spirit’s flight
Or seen some otherworldly light
Instead I idly looked at wedding gowns,

I feel I didn’t make the grade
And ever since that time I’ve prayed
That she’ll forgive the lapse and love me still.

Wherever she is dancing now
I hope she realizes how
My love is wrapped around her like a crown.

And as she starts eternity
With body new and spirit free
I hope she knows her heart lives on in me.

I think about her all the while
Sometimes with tear-sometimes with smile
But she walks closer by me than before.
  
The wisdom that she shared with me-
The training in the way to be
Are part and parcel of my very soul.

I’ll always be a part of her
Through any change that may occur
My love and fond remembrance will not fade.

So though she left without goodbye
To claim her mansion in the sky
I know she’ll save a corner there for me.

And come that future afternoon
Maybe distant, maybe soon,
I’ll hold her hand in greeting, not farewell.

And she will say she overlooked
My sitting down with bridal book
And that she knows I did the best I could.

She knew the measure of my love
And as she joined the realms above
Considered me to be her good girl still.

Then all the pain I’ve hid inside
Will disappear and I can glide
Into my own eternity at peace.          
                ljm

Some days on back I sat on a pub’s oak stool
and drew in the musty smell of its past,
its scent of old leather and spilled beer that pooled
under the floorboards in a sticky mass.

An old man came in and pulled up a chair
and he scratched at his stubbly beard.
His grey eyes had fixed me in a granite stare
and rumbled ‘til his raspy throat cleared.

He said, “The word ‘nostalgia’ comes from Greek stems.
It means the pain of homecoming.
We look to the past through a cataract lens
at a ‘home’ that’s made out of nothing.”

I asked, “You can’t go back to your home again?”
He shook his head, a woolen wisp of a sigh.
“That home exists in the land of pretend,”
he softly exhaled in laconic reply.

And then he stood and slipped away home
while the strains of “Jerusalem” played.
I sat in my cloud of memories alone,
from fog emerged in the present to stay.

she crosses the line
black hair shining
like the raven's wing
alive like a bird in flight

eyes, soft, so complex

like a church's stain glass window

the sky above,
the sea below,

are not as blue.

and her seductive, smiling face,
lips blowing shadows,
courting lovers

a little risk involved,
a little madness necessary.

she'll steal your heart with passion
to set the night on fire,
spread the smoldering ashes across a page

and dance ballet while strumming
your heartstrings.

some jump into the fire,
and some are never free.

that flash of fire,
a savage love
as there ever was
burning through the canvass,

but when

she smiles...

confess to the wind,
who knows only of freedom
and bears no burdens.

(I am your breeze)

Does he know he’s a poet?
The oceanic, the mystic,
The boy who sees his own reflection in his eyelids;
He sings Esther’s song on his way up the mountain.
With granite on his back,
And marble in his pockets,
He carries his alms for the Oracle Sisters;
Does he know the crevices of his brain are indeed rivers?
Replenishing his worn soul with rubies.
The ocean boy,
Disillusioned by his youth,
And with Crawfish swimming between his ankles,
Must he sojourn alone, in this desolate plane?
Or will he think of new landscapes, with a new Sun, new water, and a new friend?

To Liz Arnold

Her slicing eye carved all
through me as she spoke

stories of marriage, cancer,
poems never to be written,

of garden stones and cocktails,
of **** coffee house parties.

What did she think of me,
more boy than man, sitting

in her worn maroon chair,
telling her of country miles,

of listless marriage, of nights
wide and deep and strange,

of the river bed of the heart,
& poems never to be written?

Liz stared intently, her eyes
dissecting; I never did know.

I draw a banana on my leg
Every day
Just so that
Something is constant