In Passing


So have you wondered lately
where the turtles we buried
have gone to? I have 
for some reason. In this timid season
of budding discontent (as memory
skulks away to pettier days, when
concern loomed heavily mainly over my pleasure, my
food and my rent), suddenly I remember:
In summer the couples strolling by cannot know
that we ourselves could happen by and not know
where the turtles finally, somewhere, settled in a somber
December of coffin brown, cradled by the one stream left to
trickle from the season when the park was leafy wet,
and we screamed each other down. So, night years away, do you

hanker and sway at all for the sunnier days, plinking
atop a concrete wall? Or still 
consider them — as you cried out then — 
“My babies!”? Or did you bury
yourself in the yawning gape of seasons stretched endlessly
relentlessly between us, where others I’ve known have
settled comfortably in crypts of upholstered poison,
leather and chrome? I hope you haven’t decided for yourself to
uncover any last-known graves. If you should 
want to, let me save you. Cradle you. Kiss your face again
in a warming cup. Wait till green grass or yellow leaves return
to discover love, left for buried with the brown and the stream
and the turtles. Or . . .

forget I ever dug any of this dead stuff up.





Facebook Photo


I don’t know what became of you 
and your life in the lifetime 
after we parted. But suddenly 

(through the miracle of Facebook)

you’re a wife, relaxed on the arm
of a chair, a cushion for the gracious
smile your husband radiates at anyone

out here. Your smile has narrowed
to steel, a stare, a lifetime beyond 
the warmth of your eyes when they

froze me, nearly threw me (cowering)
over the edge in the dark
as you stood in jest 

on the ledge of the bridge 
towering 
over Rock Creek Park.


Credits: “In Passing” was previously published in Half Drunk Muse; “Facebook Photo” was previously published in Tipton Poetry Journal.