I feel that familiar guilt everytime
my shadow darkens her headstone.
Ever the errant son, my visits
to her grave come once a year -
Memorial Day, penitentially, flowers
in hand. However, the preacher
said her soul is no longer here
so I've adopted that rationale.
Mom, I know you're not supposed
to be there, but if you are,
forgive me, again. Your son.

--

He used to eat them up, wives that is -
sweet, delicate things who gave him
their hearts, three in all over the dark years,
destined sooner or later to look deep
into his black eyes and know the desolation
they offered, to begin comprehending
the cold chasm of pain to which their
innocence and credulity had brought them.

Today two of the former wives stood
an appropriate distance from his grave
and the milling stand of mourners,
immediate family to be sure, and those
who tried but could find nothing else
to do on this blustery day. The ex-wives
each scooped a handful of damp earth
and threw it with spiteful satisfaction
into the gaping mouth of his grave.
"Eat that", one was heard to say.

--

Sadly, she was consumed, fated
long before I ever met her, soaked
to her precious core with cigarettes,
cheap wine and strong tranquilizers,
fighting the demons that clawed at her soul
whenever she tried living and loving
free of the chemicals.
Her demons I would never want to share,
although I was all too eager
to share her bed, share her days
without contributing what she needed,
and so she continued to drink
and laugh with that sad spirit the
laugh of the condemned, until
she finally drifted from life into death
and I hope, no, I pray into the peace
she had desperately sought while
confronting her living wasteland.

--

Today I came across your fragrance, your scent,
for the first time in years, and I thought of your pale
skin, your *******, lips, the yielding of your body.

I always assumed it was lotion you wore, as if the scent
and the allure were unintentional, not a purposefully
and seductively placed essence, but simply your scent,
carried so appropriately upon the spring breeze.

Why don't I smell it more often? I wish I could. I don't
even know where it came from this time - some woman
on the street, or wafting hauntingly from a vendor's
cache of perfumes, or through the doorway of Macy's?

The memories struck me like a dull arrow straight
to the heart - I turned but you weren't there, nor did
your scent last for more than a few precious seconds.
It was there and then it was gone, just like you were.

I've obviously never gotten over you  - you continue
to linger in that special niche in my memories, waiting
for the occasion to leap sweetly back into my conscious.

--

Snow fell deeply on the graves that night,
falling on both the wealthy and not so,
coating with cleanliness and purity all who
do not deserve and the very few who may.
The snow descended coldly and quietly,
blanketing gravestones and statues alike.
Distinguishable only by their shadows
and heavenward thrusts and stances,
they continue to designate where bodies
lay and bright hopes are finished.
Despite the softness and the silence,
above the solitude and endless white,
the boundless rage of ended dreams
seems to penetrate upward, to shriek.

--

I wonder if her death has been duly noted,
whether the trees in the forests became hushed,
the wind paused for a few respectful minutes,
and the rivers that run wild, grew briefly tamed.
Did anyone notice light was somehow less bright,
and that a far-away star flashed and disappeared?
In her honor, did the fragrance of wild flowers flood
the woods and did even the tiniest of creatures pause
in their meanderings, not comprehending the why,
only aware that something good that was there, is gone?

*(For Dorothy, my painting partner,
who died Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010)

He was an elderly man, clothed in desolation,
a gray man fading into the stoop on which he reclined
as if he were already turning to dust, disintegrating.
He coughed, and coughed again the rasp of an ailing
man, a rattle vibrating from the fathoms within,
and he fumbled for his pack of cigarettes
as if to reaffirm his intention of dying should his
bottle of cheap wine not propel him into oblivion. He
was muttering, muttering secrets to himself, or of himself,
or perhaps proverbs to show someone, anyone,
how enlightened he could be there on the gray stoop
as dust and the remainder of his life swirled about him.

--