Tourist

I barely move now. Nearly still.

Crawling beneath a shell, 

the past stacked high, scales 

for every memory. 

Inside each, a photo or two. 

Some letters. A wool cap.

With my load, I amble 

along, here and there. 

No sense of where. 

The question every day, 

where now? 

What is life without a hill to climb? 

There must be a hill to climb.

A widow must step outside 

and look around,

pick up a tool and get to work. 

She must choose a path and clear it, 

then fill it with flagstone. 

No good to stroll about  

like some old tourist 

in Chinatown. 

Gutttural sounds

Oh honey, look at me.

Sitting here and must endure

your failure to be present,

to suffer the deficiency 

of you all by myself,

endure the lack of you 

without you.

Here and now this paucity 

of you must be gone

through so alone.

I can’t remember all we did,

only how you nursed me in the dark.

I have memorized your eyes on me.

I could not love you more 

than I loved myself 

but I loved you enough, 

or so you wrote in every card 

piled here on my lap. 

But just when I need you most, 

you are so absent,

so enormous this gap.

Groomed

His grooming strikes you 

the way a green golf course in winter 

calls out 

for a long long 

glance. 

His love of it speaks

no words, 

there’s a shyness in him 

toward the art 

though he entered the world 

knowing 

its schemes.

Even when the nurse wheels 
him to dinner, 

you must look at the man 

with waves of white hair 

in the knobby whelk sweater, 

those dark eyes open and blank 

as a mounted stag, 

but my oh my, 

what class, what rank.