except on Christmas

Sometimes this is what you are given,
ten minutes alone while the boys laugh under the hose.
You pour a diet soda, read a few paragraphs
as sweat glues paint chips into creases
of the inside of your elbow.

Sometimes this is all you are given
a few minutes to remember Uncle Charles,
how he fought the war, made his fortune
climbed Mayan stairs
and ended his letters
“keep the home fires burning.”

Nana is alone in the farmhouse
without strength to strike a match. Scattered,
we each carry our stick that glows,
and hold high the embers like a runway.

Return Trip

Harry would take his journal
and sit out in the garden before sunrise,
old man afghan across his lap and when
no words came, he would call for them
“Poets, come to me!”
and they were always waiting
just on the other side of the page
to blow puffs of color into his pallid cheeks.

I once called for dead poets to guide
my hand across the page like some Ouija muse
and the needle always spelled out my assignment:
sulfur moths and riverstone
stray voltage, steel.
“Go! Go! Write how we carry our machinery with us
everywhere,
even here to these muddy banks.”

But your eyes are no longer behind mine
I see for one
write for one
live for one
just like when you were alive

I am not sorry,
it must have been your choice.
Spirits do not listen
to the scolding words of women scorned,
“Away! Away! I have no time for the dead today!”

Hopefully you found someone new to possess
and if we meet I will kiss her full on the mouth
just like that rich old widower in the Thornbirds
who kissed Father Ralph,
sucking in all her lovers reborn into his youth.

Time clicks and we watch the abacus fill,
beads sliding one by one to the right
until everyone we ever loved
is on the other side.