Wichita Triptych

Sometimes the rain shines Just when the sun reigns, And that was the way it is Beyond those French doors That late afternoon here In this mind’s early evening Where they still fade in That cool color Polaroid, Pastel shades of her prom dress, A bowl of double peonies, Promising, precocious, Trying, trying to open. • Their friend and he were tight Tight-rope walkers, self-taught Taut-trope-talkers, stalking Jamb-up, arm-in-arm And caroling to lucky stars Their bars and rebars, The night a carousel Of tryst and troth, Of casual carousals, Cocky arousals, Pitching the dark to the dark. (Streetlight and moth, Reader, she married both.) • But then there he was, In the morning’s mourning, Soi-disant Proustian mignon, Aesthetic ascetic And Kansas rube Reducing his thought To a bouillon cube That no one hot Ought ever pore over.