In the ICU by the bedside where the respirator
breathed, I stood as if I were standing with you 
on a cusp or a horizon in a slim bend of light
at an intemperate, almost foreign border.

You were silent as you had been for days, unable 
to be anything other than silent, listless, discolored.
It was Thursday afternoon when I finally said 
it would be all right if you wanted to stop. 

Said that your daughter was driving up 
from New Orleans. Would be where I was 
soon  ̶  beside the bed  ̶  beside you along with Stuart. 
That Stu was home at that very moment, tucking
sheets, tidying-up a room of grief for your daughter.

You are behind the camera in all the crimson suffused
sunset photos of Florida beaches, the snapped shots 
of the rest of us on Christmas Eve, the small bands
ringing the table you’d set, lifting glasses toward your lens.

There will never be another spoonful of turtle soup
without you there and not there. You've been
with me for every such sip at various and sundry 
restaurants throughout south Louisiana since you made 
that soup for the four of us one night in maybe '92.

Soup beside which all the rest have paled. 
Though they have all been good enough, I guess,
to keep me going through these days of tragedy 
and joy where you will never be again. But still

a spoonful of soup, evening fog in oaks,
certain lights in through window onto bric-a-brac
or under chair legs on a rug seize our hearts 
and bring you back to us.
                        

Though he was run off from Montrose High
as incorrigible, everyone asks for Dex 
because "he could paint a pinstripe on a rooster." 
Dex keeps his lines impeccable, pays attention
to the most minute of details. 
“Never a reason to rush.,” he’ll say 
while he exhales a Chesterfield.

Dex takes only high dollar calls.
One week he stirs a vibrant ochre
as a dentist’s wife heads out for yoga class.
The next, he rolls jade up and down a hallway
while a politician in a back study 
explodes a string of curses into his cell phone.

Dex parties and batches it until he turns 42.
Then he falls for a plump, little product from Indiana
who is down here as a Century 21 regional manager.
They marry quiet-like at a Holiday Inn on Highway 17.

His wife gives Dex a ready-made family
as his of-a-sudden daughter turns eleven.
Dex takes to being a dad like a lab takes to pond water.
He is the one that carts the girl to soccer practice.
The girl blooms under the tutelage of Dex’s level voice.

So Dex is sore oppressed two years in
when friends start to warn him about things 
they see his wife posting on FaceBook 
which habit he has never quite established.

Seems the ambitious little lady from Indiana
is living large having hooked up
with a high roller in a crimson ‘Stang 
who is developing a subdivision 
where there used to be a marsh.

Dex flat loves that woman and that little girl
better than he loves his Coors, though
his Coors proves to be the more reliable.
                        

Mason came, still looking dangerous 
as one of King Lear’s besotted knights,
still lurching right each step, hip hitched 
by what must be stabbing lumbar pain. 

You could hang a hammock, catch a nap,
inside his slow Tennessee drawl.  
Renee poured iced tea on the patio 
while I finished in the garden. 
Shoved bamboo shafts into 
shoveled dirt. Looped twine, 
tied up tomato stalks.

When I finally settled into a chair
Mason was telling how a friend 
called on a Saturday eight years ago 
to say, Turn on channel 141 now, 
it’s Cops.” He saw his daughter there.
On a shadowed sidewalk his daughter
propped up a tattooed lad whose ass 
Memphis fuzz finally cuffed and hauled off.

He saw his own daughter on grimy,
historic pavement. Beale Street, 3 a.m.
She was fifteen. Sixteen when 
Mason saw her on the tube; 24 
now, doing sets and lights for some
struggling and amoebic theater troop.

It was good, so good to sit and 
hear another’s troubled pauses
as a thrush ducked into wisteria
with a flag-leaf in its beak. Good 
to sit still and let the world reel.  
Good to slide beer down my throat 
as if I had no care.