As if weightlessness were aspirational―
what nonsense―

                                  your death,

        a stone 

I can only hope to shoulder forever. Imagine
it gets better―

                                  what nothing

        am I left with

then? Even despair carries a particular
charge: that fantastic

                                  last whiff of lavender

      detergent

imprinted on the collar of a holiday sweater―

                                    mama,

the mourners are assembling. March me 
up that hill …

I’m sorry I’m taking the car to the airport that is closer to,
rather than farther away from, the oncoming hurricane. 
In the parking garage of my love for you, I circle around
quietly, looking for a space to put the day’s best guesses, 
one not too far from the kiosk of you, standing mute and 
ready to hand me a small slip of paper that reads  I’m sorry
I can’t tell you what I want.  So we’re both mildly apologetic 
all the time, which is a small courtesy, two pulsars fanning
light at one another in bursts detectable years later. Why
won’t you take this bundle of daffodils. Why have the 
daffodils turned into dirty forks. I’m sorry about my socks.
See, there I go again. In the backyard, a vine from next
door has crawled up and over the fence and has flourished
there, a great nest of green six feet off the ground. I’d
trim it, but you’re holding the hedge clippers against your
hair. You’re saying that your hair is morning glories and 
you’d like to keep the morning glories if possible. I don’t 
even know what morning glories are exactly; my mother
is an excellent gardener but I have neither her memory for
color nor your cataloguing tendencies and it’s late in the day
and I’m sorry for that. It’s difficult to hold you in this
shaft of light when you keep taking three steps away and 
sitting down in the nearest chair, one hand on each knee
like a monument. It’s difficult to feel your body against
my side in sleep, the desires it holds distant and tired, 
like an animal that has walked too far in an inhospitable
climate. I am full of water but as thirst is a form of 
suffering, I would not wish it upon you. Instead, I will
work my way through your dreaming, which I know is of
endless snow fields. I will wait in this puddle of melt. 
Perhaps, one day, you will come to me with your skin 
near to brittle from the cold you love so much. Perhaps on 
that day we can begin to think together about the seasons, 
about how spring can also arrive in precision, if you let it.

Once more
I summon you
Out of the past
With poignant love,
You who nourished the poet
And the lover.
I see your gray eyes
Looking out to sea
In those Rockport summers,
Keeping a distance
Within the closeness
Which was never intrusive
Opening out
Into the world.
And what I remember
Is how we laughed
Till we cried
Swept into merriment
Especially when times were hard.
And what I remember
Is how you never stopped creating
And how people sent me
Dresses you had designed
With rich embroidery
In brilliant colors
Because they could not bear
To give them away
Or cast them aside.
I summon you now
Not to think of
The ceaseless battle
With pain and ill health,
The frailty and the anguish.
No, today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.