Epitaph
He stole forsythia.
He lived for love.
He never got caught.
Copyright © 2014 Jim Moore. This poem originally appeared in Underground: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014). Used with permission of the author.
Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.
I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often
of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green
1
At first when you leave town,
the dog and I maintain dignified silence.
After no more than two hours
I’m talking to her, after three
she’s telling me the story of her life.
I nod my head at every word,
encouraging her
to take all the time she needs
2
I have the vice
1
I remember my mother toward the end,
folding the tablecloth after dinner
so carefully,
as if it were the flag
of a country that no longer existed,
but once had ruled the world.
2
7 A.M. and the barefoot man
leaves his lover's house
to go back to his basement room
across the alley. I nod hello,
continuing to pick
the first small daffodils
which just yesterday began to bloom.
3
Helicopter flies overhead