I have a lot to be thankful for and the good luck to know it and be able to see it and say it ... it’s all about the gratitude
Reflected
Back to us,
a photo of
our faces,
young,
heads covered
in thick dark hair,
from a perfect, shiny
chrome
side mirror
of a ’58 Buick —
We were not quite cocky,
though we were making
an obvious effort
to appear . . .
what?
Worldly I suppose.
yet nothing snide —
perhaps
a little foolish in our
certainty
that our reflections
would always
gaze back at us . . .
. . . recognizable, and
that the chrome
would never rust
and that we’d always know
all we thought we knew
back in
1968.
Whispering
I am fifty now.
I want to leave
some words behind
to be here with the
pheasants caw, the
wind rising and falling and rising,
the sounds of traffic, warm tires on smooth roads —
I want some of my words
to trail behind me, so that
someday, when I’m gone
my words
these words, which I’m whispering now
might be in your voice
as you turn to the face
of someone you love
and whisper.
Anticipating An Ending
After all the rest of it
what more did I want?
After being loved, grieving,
sitting by the pool
writing the poem —
After dreaming of sex and
remembering the feel of a woman’s
flesh, so smooth and
warm or
cool and
wet
at my fingertips
caressing that flesh —
What more did I want?
On the good days,
more of it —
On the bad days,
to remember it —
And at the end of it all,
all of it, again.
Photos by Jonny Gios & Redd F.
Written in summer, 1998
