Dearly beloved faraway, faraway,
gathered here, there and everywhere
or at least somewhere in my heart
those days of ours, those nights,
rich with delight, promise of
more to come.
The weather here was fair yestreen,
cold and rainy today, and in the tree
the blissful sparrow prognosticates
fair to passing sunny, for the morrow.
Things go on here like they do.
The barber ate all my plums
as well as his own,
God curse his shears and
luscious Laura, lithe as a leopard,
got my goat and got away
when I changed over to men.
She was killed by Petrarch’s ghost
come to life as a blunderbussing
Budweiser truck. What a way to go!
Poor lovely Laura.
How beautiful and fateful
our life together
seems in recollection,
seems to fit what we made
with our hands and minds;
come see the garden
we planted together
side by side all those years ago,
troweling up the good rich dirt.
All that hard work paid off
and the flowers bloomed,
the grapes clustered on the vines,
the corn in rows
came up nice and straight;
all of it pretty as a picture
by Monet or Manet,
fixed in our darling frame
of memory forever.
Christ, I miss you,
your undershirts hanging on the line,
the smell of cheap red wine
on the pillows; my old man, my wanderer,
say you love me and come home to roost
where you should; the grey is in your hair,
I say come back,
take your comfortable old chair
and sit out old age with me;
time’s a-wasting, and one day
we’ll go to sleep and wake no more.
