unedited

This is the silent smooth floor

of the twenty third floor, and lights

lights all around.

 

Nothing to do again Sunday

but remember and work around

the house.

 

I remember sitting on the hard wood

floor with the music playing

and you hanging your head in a book.

 

Sitting outside in the small lawn

making a carved walking stick

for a girl, a brown haired woman.

 

I went by the old house

and the garden looks different

and my old front room

 

juts out and I recall the two a.m.

drunk driver crash into the side door

of the old neighbor's Pontiac.

 

That next summer I called from

the top of Arches Park, first time I had

a cellphone, Caroline’s father’s, and I called

 

the home phone and you were reading

O’hara or someone and picked up

which was damn rare, you seemed

 

mad that I was all the way out

in the back seat with Caroline

and you were in your old shorts

and hungry from not having

 energy to cook. Then Sortwell Street

where we had frozen pipes and the porch

cat who sprayed my laundry, and you sautéed

 mushroom ones night and we all

made cups of green tea and sumac,

and there was a note one weekend

you left on the table: Up To Saluda Visage Clear 

Come Up, right after the whole arrest

episode when you broke

in to the hotel just for a snack then

ran for fear of everything.

Two girls from Canada, or white

mountains, North -- I can’t recall. But I had

to call and wake up your old man

 

and tell him you were charged

with larceny, which I thought meant

you had burned something down.

 

Which you had, you had. Because it

was April and Ryan had died and it

was a terrible Spring

 

and now so many years past

and I just can’t believe the way you

left, just gone, one everyday morning,

 

after what went through and all

the shit we fought against but

quick into night, I get it.

 

How I miss you and your

hair of trouble and mischief

and always more real than anyone else

 

or just so you in every sense

and by now I see the path, how it ends

and wish it had gone different, but time's sealed

 

and I have a lot to tell you

and you would listen and laugh

like the tops of our homemade beer

 

bottles, yeasty rockets in

the kitchen underground beer basement,

or us drinking on the washing machine

 

of our girlfriends’ house wondering about

Rome or where we went next, with every expectation

that no one would understand. No one.

So we agreed to walk along the Green River

and decide how we would make sense of

things. We just never expected so much rain.

We never expected rain.