to G. H.
from a grateful client

Alone and in precarious balance,

Threatening to submerge,

I held up for viewing and for safety

The most precious thing in the world:

My son – who he was and how he was;

Myself – who I am and how I am; and

My memories of him, his world and mine –

In totality, the universe as known to me,

All suns and stars and planets and galaxies,

And asked someone in all the world

To come and look

Before the end.

And you came, shielding your eyes,

And looked upon this terrible thing I held aloft

Blinding in its austerity –

For the thing was me and all that is mine

Destroyed –

More a beauty on the descending side of terror.

I painted memories into your unseeing eyes

In the firm, round glows of his dimpled childhood

In the pear-tasting blues of his peerless eyes,

In the rose-scented sundazzles of his hair,

In the trumpeting bronzes of his awards,

And in the slower Doppler shades of

Loved forever,

Lost forever,

Forevergone.

And my mournful song reverberated in the

Kind, wide hollows of your listening

As we gave words to the Humming Chorus.

We rocked upon gentle waves

As you carried us, like the River –

In this city of one million persons

Plus One –

Making slow and sorrowful circles,

Over and over again

With your silk-gloved palm,

In the tear-stained cliqueart,

Smoothing out the place to lay to rest

-- All piteous and wild –

My world, all planets and stars,

And my fair young son as well.

I laid him there,

In the place of your making,

And smoothed his hair,

And stroked his head,

And kissed the eyelashes

Of which we have spoken,

One last time,

And gave him, my life, and all I’d known,

Back to the chaos,

Back to the void,

Held only in the caverns of your mind.