23 Missing you poems

First it is one day without you. Then two. And soon, our point: moot . And our solution, diluted. And our class action (if ever was) is no longer suited. Wherewith I give to looting through the war chest of our past like a wily Anne Bonny who snatches at plunder or graft. But the wreck of that ransack, that strongbox, our splintering coffer, the claptrap bastard of the best we had to offer, is sog-soaked and clammy, empty but for sand. Like the knuckle-white cup of my urgent, ghastly hands in which nothing but the ghost of love is held. Damn it to hell.

Could you come back to me, Douglas, Douglas, In the old likeness that I knew, I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true. Never a scornful word should grieve ye, I’d smile on ye sweet as the angels do,— Sweet as your smile on me shone ever, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true. Oh, to call back the days that are not! My eyes were blinded, your words were few; Do you know the truth now up in heaven, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true? I never was worthy of you, Douglas; Not half worthy the like of you: Now all men beside seem to me like shadows— I love you, Douglas, tender and true. Stretch out your hand to me, Douglas, Douglas, Drop forgiveness from heaven like dew; As I lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss; everything blooms coldly. I expect you. I thought one night it was you at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs, you in a shiver of light, but each time leaves in wind revealed themselves, the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak. We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove. In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires over which young men and women leapt. June efforts quietly. I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall so even if spring continues to disappoint we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain. I have new gloves and a new hoe. I practice eulogies. He was a hawk with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs of a salamander crossing the old pony post road. Yours is the name the leaves chatter at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

1 When we were leaving home for the army you burst into tears on the train. You said, “I will miss my parents. I have never travelled that far.” But you also claimed it was everyone’s duty to defend the country, and you would fight the Russian Revisionists to the dead end. I lowered my head and did not cry. But my mother’s eyes, dimmed with tears, were striving in the cold wind to hold back the train going to the North. 2 On the Northern land our foot-prints disappeared in the snow. The hard ice was slowly losing its layers. We didn’t have to wear fur hats on our patrols along the borderline, and watered our horses at little springs. 3 At last the rain loosened the black earth. Azaleas bloomed on the mountain slopes. The woods did not understand war. The mountains and the rivers did not understand war. But every night we slept with our clothes on. We were prepared to fight. 4 The tanks, which played the enemy, were running through the valley. Wooden grenades and rubber bazooka-projectiles started raining towards them. Everything was false, but we did it seriously. Why did you choose that tank with a revolving barrel like a gigantic scythe, to lay an explosive package at its back? It laid you on the ground and its caterpillar ran over your limbs. We carried you down the hill. Your blood dropped into a small brook flowing towards the Amur. 5 White ceilings, white walls, white nurses. Only your black eyes were sliding slowly. Our eyes collided. You were staring at me in deadly silence. Can you speak? Can you hear what others say? You are two feet shorter than before. You sluggishly turned into your ward like a startled turtle. Watching your warped back I was sending off an epoch. 6 Are you still alive? You are a little dog, abandoned, often groaning at the door of my conscience. Tonight, in the long silence again I am thinking of you.

I Arch inverted: white peony and stamens, yellow. Center of the body. Imagines. Who is absent. Fingers in my mouth—memory. Dragonfly so blue in the head. Orange, as fire, in the body. Wings, transparence. Disappearing arms. The space where he was. Aureole. The space he is, she was. And the opposite. Defines the dragon which flies. Iridescent where it was. Echo of hued wings. II Heat at the center. Heat where she was. Lack of passion where the torso won't go. No path through what is occupied. Space. III Falls in a delicate arch, sees own soul. Cadaver as shrine, concavity. So white. Says white flesh and no spirit. And touching the dead. And touching what is not. IV In our calculations: the fact of matter at lack of matter. The invisible, collapsed star. If you must,a black hole. Thus the message of blackness clearly indicating the coordinates of nothingness. V Remembers the pilgrimage to the illumined wall. And Christ's face was said to appear. God's face. Who sees it? Child trying, trying. Says to the child (and it is the juncture) go toward faith, go through absence, way to belief. VI (Not believing. Not seeing and not believing. All the chants to atmosphere, blanks.) VII Implodes, and all the way to nothing. To illumine, first, then fades to black. Hole where light was. Absent star, perforation in there. And memory of light, halo on. Angels who walk among. Seeming darkness around the head. VIII Falling languid. Lover not there. IX My sweet—the miles,the night. Darling my fingernails bear their half- moons half-gone how long? The house.Really my love. The rooms are emptied.Haunted. Ghost of you come here body. X And I can see her, worshipper, with a blue robe, biting her nails— thinks it's true,it's true, someone witnessed the miracles, someone saw it all. XI And the mouths. Reeling the bass in. Hooking the parabola of mouth, air. Violence of fish body in the air. Absence of water, presence of... Open my mouth. His fingers going in. The gills going open open nothing nothing. Dragonfly so blue in the head. On red wings, disappeared. Sing sing going going. XII Of all the tendernesses at the end there was that bouquet of wild orchids the constant ritual the washing the turning of the body so cleansed by a lover's hands until the struggle for breath the gasp and the body getting less warm the ceremony and like the Egyptians all preparation then the emerging presence the advent of absence the adornments artifacts in the tombs where the lungs tighten in our awe it's all there but spirit saying goodbye are you gone it's difficult to tell you must be

“Even when you are not in a room, you are in it, your voice everywhere.” –Bill Holm “Even when you are not in a room, you are in it, your voice everywhere.”–Bill Holm The message that’s recorded on the phone is unmistakably bad news, and then another call tells us it’s one we love— a sudden death while traveling, somehow appropriate for one who always seized life too completely to stand still. A door slams shut, a wall has dropped away, and once again I’m driven back to empty pages, insufficient words, to rooms he always filled on entering— rooms lined with books, piano music, and good friends who raise their glasses one last time. And now, as all the lights are blinking off in every prairie town we’ve ever loved, when all the toasts are made and songs are sung, when leaving is the only certainty, a single voice keeps echoing, along each dark, untraveled hallway of the heart.

I forgot what your voice sounds like exactly i remember the shape of it the feeling of it but the actual sound it scares me sometimes that memory does this replaces the real thing with the idea of it

Nobody sits in your chair we haven't talked about it we just don't i don't think we will for a while that's okay that's what chairs are for sometimes

Your side of the bed still smells like you i haven't washed the pillowcase don't tell me to wash it i know but not yet

We watched so many movies on this couch i can't lie down on it the same way anymore my body remembers where you were