Who Has Been Dead for Twenty-Seven Years
An obscure bell is shimmering the air otherwhere
in a cairn buried inside a green, green plain
and you are There! Alive in candlelight
warming in the black loam and fecund dark.
Your kind nod tells me you’ve just been reading and awaiting my awaking.
I’ll follow the incandescence breathing from your fleshly palm
as God mends the white gold watch that splashed into the river Lethe
along with your blood when you fell.
The light fixes on your diamond wedding ring, and it’s a circle again.
The white and green blouse is pressed and smells of sizing and L’Air du Temps,
penny loafers are polished bright. You’re eager to lead
me deeper into the passageways and closets where memories and dreams
play on and on. We’re lunching together at the S & S Tea Room.
Mother pricks her finger on an oyster shell, staining the white linen pleats
of her spring frock {It’s just a dress (not a shroud!)} and there under the purse of meat
a Sun-sized pearl gleams and glows.
The waitress proclaims, “All shall be well, and all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well,”
Again.
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