Correspondence

Love, the summer you saw The Arch of Triumph,
A post card I dreamt about, both of our lives, as usual,
Were starting over Of course we didn’t know it Nights I took walks or sat alone on the decrepit front porch I was waiting for the cat to come home after mooching all day
On somebody’s leftovers, couch space, air conditioning By then I had him for almost two years, a large Holstein-spotted
Tabby your Ex unloaded one Christmas That same morning,
About 3 a.m , the toilet backed up, flooded my neighbor below Between ringing bucketfuls, collecting newspapers of wet soot,
He drilled a hole in his light to let excess water pour:
Brown, brown, a puddle spouting Listening, expecting skin to sizzle, hair to fry, I fell
Into infatuation & decided to move, the proximity too incidental,
A temptation whenever loneliness thumped.

Of course I stayed put while, by then, you were touring
England, newly wedded, visiting the in-laws Next came Greece, Athens’ ruins & finally, after
An airport bomb threat, mysterious Istanbul with
The trailing-after men, & the women, all tall,
Anonymous black babushkas “It’s scary, but wonderful,” you wrote.

I kept the letter on my bed stand beside a balloon globe
Filled with the breath of some close friend of ours’
On the wall, above both,
Small pasted on glow-in-the-dark stars shone, all personal
constellations
I communed to while sleeping In fact, they are still there, though a
few
Have fallen or lost their magical green tint.

This evening on the porch, the sap of two magnificent Blue Spruces
Rotting its roof, I visited with my downstairs neighbor, the crush,
(lie, lie) long since gone He talked of ‘World’s End’, the book,
& worried aloud about the great ozone meltdown I said to envision
Tissues converging over a re-opened wound, listened to locusts
Stirring in star-dotted branches, & saw my cat in the beams of an
Oncoming car For a minute breath stopped, then, whoosh, softness
Scampering, & his tail curling about my ankles .

Now you’re in Rome, over seas some war bombed Scary but wonderful Friend, you were right