Meadow is dying
I have that thought maybe once a week.
More often I amend it:
Meadow may be dying or
do you suppose that Meadow is dying or
how will I know when Meadow is really dying?I saw her at the laudromat
under the yellow-green fluorescent lights
of hospitals and jails and schools.
She said, "I need to get some body work,
although Darrell has been working on my left shoulder.
I suppose that they press on things down there.
and sometimes I don't feel like being in my body any more."
I, on the other hand, suppose
that "they" are tumors.
I nod clutching my granola and light bulbs
while the jumbo washers whoosh
like the tides at the Headlands.So maybe she will die on a Thursday like Vallejo.
Today is Sunday and it rains anyway.
So this is one more friend
I don't get to keep...I wrote:
"The Hand of God
Could it be mine?
This small hand, trailing like the Seine,"
But, no, this hand is not small.
It is large, but refined
and I'm not God
because God doesn't remember anything
being as He lives in the Eternal Present
and we are not in Paris.
But it is the Lord's Day
and I can't stop crying into my elephant hands
which remember themselves
cupping the violet Cortinarius
wavy like elephant ears
while my fowery friend
blossomed for me before my eyes.I want to become diaphanous.
I want my lawyer mind to go play
with that passionate mouse
for yes, mice are passionate, if you think about it
I want to be brave today to enjoy
the toasty pleasures of the fur.
I don't want to know what it is
to be Waiting for Death
at an Early Age.With this hand-friend
I can almost reach
the Almost-Dead
to keep them from dragging
so much of my past and my future
with them.But
maybe when we are all dead
we'll say to each other, "You know,
we're so lucky to be dead now."