Death is the lonely bump on a road crowded with fervor…

I

Tell me without remorse or censor that
my hands are more a callus of trauma
than an incitement to lust.

He died on a different road a different man
than ever the man you will remember like a
mistress forever.

II

Tell me that now it is not the same – that it
will never be the way it was – admit that
what ever the past, I am not your only man.

To do anything less is to demean what
greatness there is still or may be again, and
I do mean we are more than an old potential.

III

Blind woman glasses and tape on your
ears are little protection bumping against
me the other soul on your lonely road.

What will be your bag of gold if you remove
from it the heat of your body and give away
its color to someone now departed?

IV

This death thing is killing the three of us –
he who has gone, you who may yet return,
and I who wonder about my place in it all.

Its belly cold now, its sad mind and heavy
heart, its where to then, after we’ve spread
his ashes on an isle of fire?