Not on the east coast where it was too cold for my mother
to leave her apartment, the quietest place on
earth––
a body, divided, North
to South– as my mother’s has been
since the stroke––revolving in half-darkness.
Not in the little vacation I take
in the elevator of her building, going up,
coming down.
And not even afterward, when I left on a red-eye
where it was Bloody Marys and Perry Mason the entire flight home.
Like everyone else, I’ve knocked three times on the door which opens
to another, and so on, until… And what the souls of the dead want
us to know is
they have failed
at art, at love,
too, but Look––
some are dressed to the nines in silk, head to toe,
one in a punk t-shirt, torn at the chest, another in great-grandmother’s apron
and sundress–– what good company you’re in. Are they
in a bar? Out the window
now, a crow on his throne announces, announces, then,
fuck it all, flies off.
Leaves fall,
land color-side down.
And darting along the fence, a squirrel…
Squirrels, I’m told, don’t recall, in which hollow tree,
under which plod of grass,
they’ve hidden their cache. What a delight it must be when… When
he picked me up at the airport and I couldn’t not cry the entire ride home, and
then refused to go home, so he took me out for coffee where, on a bench,
facing a fancy-schmancy hotel and tennis courts, I asked
Can we just sit here in the sun, please,
and judge everybody?––
when he said Yes.
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