Cold Moon Over Rosecrans

For P.L.P.

And what about my heart, Partisan,
now deeded to its fourth lord,
don’t you feel some gesture of restitution
is in order?

“I’ve finally disappeared
except inside your memory
and still I don’t exist!”

The moonlight, though, was fat
and the blue notes collected
in the flames along your face.
You were crystal from the dells
who felt more than I gave
but was never able to say just what that was
except how you were hurt and needed help
and didn’t know, after all, what you knew.

“Where is your kindness
to not speak for me
even though I have no voice?”

All else vanished, time seems something still to honor
in the silence that stretches from here to Montauk,
and I have wanted to be what would haunt you
but the sketches I’ve drawn in the sand
form their own tableau vivant
frozen in the blue.

“You showed such faith in a lie
I almost believed you were real.”

And I put what could be real in your keeping,
when I would go to my bed
secure among some library books
while you turned up the heat in our marital suite
falling asleep with the pen to my story in your hand,
I’d tiptoe in, next morning, and lift it away
to return it secure to its box.

“That pen was mine, and the book
was empty. You had written it without me
in fire.”