She Left Me Behind in Childhood

She worked nights as a bartender.
She even grew into liking her job,
serving down-and-outs and malcontents.
An art student, a painter, she grew up too fast,
and left me behind in our childhood.
But I watched from afar,
and understood that somethings cannot be properly understood:
why she loved when it brought such pain.

But she was a college-student painter,
stuck on one of the regulars at the bar--
a drunk droupout with charisma.
She invited him to live with her in her small apartment.

He held none of the universities' values.

Its to be asked: what would she gain from the attraction?
was it just a rebellion against published art?

Everyone told her: throw the no-good imitator out.
And I understood that she reveled in their remonstrances.

But what more could i do,
for I loved her deeply.
She let me behind along the way.
I watched on as she changed,
over years and years.
I can see now, she never knew.

The Way Things Were

Early summer drowse by the swimming pool.
Wasps buzz by my feet.
Old puddles collected from a night's rain on the concrete.
Long yellow flowers stretch themselves in the sun.
A stately mailman, clad in blue and white,
walks from home to home.
A glass of lemonade with clear ice cubes
perspires on the end-table.
On a day like today, I find myself
slowly remembering things the way they once were,
when, as if from far away, the phone rings from the mainline.

First True Love

We keep the windows open
and a breeze runs in and out of the home.
You can hear the sound of
crickets, birds, water dripping onto stones.
A white summer moon sits in the night sky.
In another room,
an old record spins on the player.

Every so often, I can hear the rotating hiss
from the sprinklers outside
as I think of my first true love,
wherever she may be,
but not in this country town,
as one dog howls,
then another,
then another. . .

An Old Couple, A Young Couple

To get to the heart of the matter:
we were all pretty drunk.

Every so often, I would get up and refill everyone's glasses
with ice and gin and clear soda water.
It was only us four:
my wife and I,
and the Corporal and his wife,
and we were going around the table swapping stories.

The retired Corporal was shirtless at the table,
red in the face and arms, but pale in the chest,
and very drunk.
(He was taking his drinks straight with lots of ice.)
His wife was also in her bathing suit,
and you didn't have to look closely to see the cellulite.
But, to her credit, she'd had three children
who also had children of their own.

The ex-Corporal was in the midde of telling the story
of the birth of their first child.
The dispute was whether or not the wife said a particular word
in the heat of childbirth.

They'd been married 42 years,
and the story has been retold a million times, I could tell.

We all looked on, in mild amusement.
The drunk ex-Corporal kept feeding the mutt under the table.
Then, he tipped over his drink,
spilling over blocks of ice.
Still, we all looked on.

Ice melted freely on the big, wooden table.

Music played unrelenting from the overhead speakers.

Time moved on without our say-so.

Perfectly Normal

They were married young.
She was thought to be beautiful, though I'd never seen her.
She'd been experienced with men, had boyfriends,
young men forever swearing themselves to her.
Promising her the world
under evening skies parted orange and purple.

Before her husband, she led a reckless life.
With Harvard boys in the back seats of automobiles;
on the wooden docks of summer lake houses;
dancing in the Ritz Hotel lounge rooms.

She found what most seek: fame.
And she lost herself in the many chords of bacchanalian experience--
in the rhythms of her pursuers.

But in the end, the chords struck dull.
After the first, it was all the same,
or, it was never the same.
Can you identify?

Anyway, the story is they were married young.
Around 22 or 23.
It didn't last after they discovered one another.
Then, they mystery was solved.
She couldn't simply live the everyday life,
and she couldn't go back to before.
So, life most everyone
who remember with envy what they once had,
and abhor what they no longer have,
she decided to give herself to children,
but died, still young, in childbirth.

I Remember When The Day Was Light

I remember when the day was light,
when I was clear-hearted and free,
when the sun was up in the clouds and shining.
I hesitate to remember now because it's no longer so.
Now, the day has worn on, and there's nothing to speak of.
Everyone has left. The letter is already sealed.
The immortal poem carved in stone is ephemeral.
The spoken word is lost
as if uttered over open sea.

Those who've left, came unannounced into my home,
drinking all my beer.
They danced to all the wrong songs,
laughed at all the wrong jokes.
I tell you, the human race is failing us--
it's timing is slightly off.

I ask, is it wrong to avoid people,
to scorn the ones who love you?

To tell them you no longer love them?

Early Morning

The sun hides behind the clouds.
As a child I was shy,
and now I'm only afraid.
Of what you ask, I couldn't say.
But this morning wakefulness leaves me content
as birds sing to one another in the rising light.
At the beginnings of days,
I remember very little of my troubles before.
Fear only comes during late afternoons and nights.

Yes, I relish these mornings--
the quiet light the sun makes,
the slow, steady turning of the summer wind.

It's only now the present is allowed to reconcile the past.

Looking Through Photographs

On this clear summer afternoon
I wonder where my old friends have gone.
The people I once considered companions,
who travelled through life with me and kept my secrets.
Do they keep them still
or have they been forgotten altogether?
Only history remembered can be written down and documented,
and it's this intimate history,
between friend and friend,
I no longer make.

Instead, I watch a group of birds
flutter in summershade.
Everyone else has left.
The sun is hidden behind a cloud.
The bloomed trees hide home from home.
And I wonder where my old friends have gone,
and when I'll fill the void they've left.