From This Distance

Yes, I can imagine it now
how we could each disappear completely
connected only through memory’s fault lines,
subduction zones all our own,
lie-protected over time’s distance
surfaces sliding under recollection
as overlaying sediments accumulate
transform into anthracite
or other hardened evidence
under pressure of ages ago.

Remembering itself long since fading
at some lost premise:
We once sang so goofily out of tune
we may actually have laughed out loud.

Uncertain too are favored wines:
zinfandel, chardonnay, oaky pinots
we declared made just for us—

Little suspecting some later taste
like treachery, say, calculated
or maybe only through regret
conveniently overlooked
while staring into one another’s eyes.

So somewhere now in middle-age
uneven embarrassment draws me back
to where memory no longer techtonically shears
along fault lines long past each other.

Whole continents have drifted slowly
to their present locations
built up and worn away,
tracing rifts in the crust still.

Ghazal

Again, again late February’s daffodils everywhere,
their daft yellow and clown’s ruffle there, there, and there.

Down the hospital sidewalk to see dying refused
I hurry past all this sunshine, the spring ground suffused.

Voices, voices fumbling, buzzing as wakened bees quietly
into the ears of friends, lovers, family, doctors anxiously:

Will our paths be outward from winter’s harsh leaven,
forward to spring’s lectionary and longed for haven?

You only are the haven of all my mirth unfeigned.
When will your pale yellowed arms hold me once again?

after laughter

our dachshund
who was so fat
she had to be
helped up
onto the couch
although
mother didn’t allow
this ever

would first eat
the wet cigar stub
dad had left
in the endtable
ashtray
beside where he’d left
his dentures

the dog would ease
an upper
or lower plate
between her teeth
jump down
and run off
to the back bedroom
burying them under
my brother’s pillow

we three brothers
would laugh
and laugh

and later listen
thru the bedroom wall
as dad in a drunken rage
wondered
where the hell
he left his teeth
this time.