His last story
fights the shadow of one large end-dot,
crude measurement, not lifesize.
It points to where he stood last in the wild wealth of days
seen in rosy reports from his future.
Small tinctures of reason none can swallow.
Had he strolled in
full health by the room that was to be his last
when one child or another was in the maternity wing?
You will always hold his children close, your hands held over their ears
as you wander howling rooms that will never be lived in.
Those days thought left to him are yours now,
rooms in the house given to you by a hideous crack in time.
In his library,
books with half their pages torn out
try to account for reasonable delights:
rooms he once measured out for a lovers' bed,
rooms he would hold aside for recreation.
Your eyes will become a clever breeze
to seek out hidden twists & curves of rooms,
to flesh out, to embellish, to soundlessly file away
the unfinished in its finest, unreasonable array.
To wheel through the ones where he considered children's names
or signed his name to cards he sent you.
Shadows across the
floors
are a dim crosshatch of good days & bad,
like opinions he made known, or did not,
lessons he taught, or did not find time for,
jars opened, jars saved ...
The sharp vernier of accident butchers a man's memory
& scatters it throughout his relations.
I did not know him.
Only your
damp & weary eyes that rake across
ignorant clods of brick & cold wood frame
that shudder with the howl
of their dull & unrepentant stillness.
(c) Dark 1994