The Smoke

Snow still sheaths the streets in her mountains,
and the spring trees shudder in the wind off her lake,
until night fades them finally and forever they're gone
into the smoke of the world.

Smell of her long hair hot in the sun through the windshield,
rattle of dried corn sheaves shaken by dusk's breeze,
soft heft of breasts sweet as winter oranges,
the breath rising in the dry heat parching her body.
And the fire rose up in me and I stretched her out, O lovely,
across the pale cloth and reached out and held and held....
Gone. Gone forty years.
The day, the lips, the hair -- gone
into the smoke of the world.

Above old Mo's bookstore late at night
she loomed above me in the lamplight
as morning seemed forever delayed.
An eastern school took her at dawn,
her name unknown, her scent and her flesh
remembered so that even now, on a unknown street
here in the west I sometimes pass
a woman with that scent and turn
wondering, all these gone years later,
could that, that one, have been her
in that night when dawn delayed,
and I woke to find her scent on the pillow
but her body forever gone
into the smoke of the world.

They enter along the blade of night.
They leave by fading into the smoke of the world.
The mists of the mind close down
and remove their distinct details:
the haiku left behind in old boxes:
"I scrunched up the moon
into my water bucket..."
Did someone say she became a singer
somewhere in California? Judy? Was that,
last innocent love of my youth, her name?

The Christian roommate with tawny hair,
licking the nipples near the kennels of the barkless dogs,
long stroking of thighs, moist heat rising
through cotton panels of Penny's panties.
That musk, that hot breath in the cherry orchards,
the dwarf cattle, that hand closing upon me
so fleetingly and then gone
into the smoke of the world.

The Italian with the moped.
The cowgirl with the blues.
The lapsed Catholic.
The painter with the horse's face and too-tight jeans.
The chintz shack. The quilt covered table.
The mouth closing over me -- Ah and Ah and Ah --
in the attic of the Frisco Mansion ---
the poet's garret on the side street, gray corridors --
the one named after the little deer, Bambi,
and then the forest takes a spark and all the woods are blazing and ash falls across the days and they are all gone ...gone
into the smoke of the world.

Then the years in the cities and the women
coming out of the night and into the smoky clubs.
The models and the painters and the posers.
Hairdressers, shop girls and those that loved the literary life.
The mockers and the shockers who kept
mostly cats but other strange pets. The ones
who were sneaking around way downtown.
The socialites at the Black and White Ball
who needed their foreheads held as they hurled
into the shrubbery and then headed back to the bar
for another burst of oblivion. The one who
became the long wife. All off to their age and gone
into the smoke of the world.

The brief wife calls from her place in the smoke,
hiding her need at the center of her speech,
and achieving assurance can't wait to fade back
to the rooms that she's chosen to have and to hold.
"How am I? I'm good. I'm doing quite well."
"That's good. Glad to hear it. I love you. Stay well."
Missed connections. Harsh static. The cellphone in fade
as the smoke settles back on her place by the lake. Gone.
Into the smoke of the world.



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Posted by Vanderleun at April 29, 2005 6:09 PM
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