page 10

Grieving Aristotle

Here it is.

The first wave.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh!

I’ve known it was coming

For over a year now.

We talked around the edges.

I kept breaking plans to see you

And told you so. You knew and

As always you understood

knowing better than I the whys of me.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the sweet pain,

The justification of the mind's eye'd lashes

I bestow on my back like the Polish Pope

so recently dead, dead, dead,

like you- cold to my lamenting!

I must have broken all the rules

Under your tutelage. You taught

Me how to untie the Gordian knot

Of the burden, we blessed by a God

so few else acknowledge to share.

You gave me the highway to understand

Rasputin, and the back door into salvation.

You showed me it was holier to be Persian

Than a hypocrite supping with the legions-

And, when I went off with Alexander

On the glorified roads to India, you blessed

The undertaking. Messengers carried the

Delicious news back and forth from Athens to wherever.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, how the loss of you

Hangs heavy on my being!

I must rally yet again so that, I fear, I must

Know the anguish of being the last one standing.

The medication is beginning to lay me down gently,

To sleep in some short respite. This is primary, rough, and real.

Whether I will shape it further I do not know. I do not think I can

Master the words for the feelings.

Just as I want Tom to hold me in his safe arms just one last time,

So do I want to hear your banter and laughter, just one brief moment more.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Shellfish Bay Reflections

The waves break o’er me,

Billowy in this latest tempest;

A red tide of events and mortals.

The undertow could carry me out but for luck

And that pluck to anchor firm,

Until what, I do not know or fear.

Driven, why so driven? Why weigh against the waves?

Tether this tempest and

Idle side the shore 'o the Bay awhile.

Rarely, does the Bay

Reflect a dead calmed, mirror of sky

To tarry and measure feelings that wake o’er me,

Storm-tossed ‘fore this self levied lull.

The Bay is a rite to me.

The Bay sweats from pours of me;

Mine, salty glands of drowned-down ‘watermen’.

Surely as the Full Flower Moon salutes the night

Are these pauses welcome markers

In the ebb and flow as

“I follow on the water”.

The Beaver Are Gone

The beaver are gone.

You are ashes and crushed bone.

I walked the trail today.

I’ve avoided it for ten years.

The dam that is no more

Was my feigned destination,

But I really wanted this walk

Again with you.

“Vittle” is old now and nothing

About him is brisk. I’m tired.

The waves still come occasionally.

I cope. So many have died or are dying.

I grieve differently now, and I

Have no fear of death.