Love

The tip of your tongue

The O of your

Lips

The way you nibble off the last

Bit of consonant

Say it again

I want to bathe in its nuances

Feel its

Omnipotence

Dreams of Old Men

Come in whispers and sighs

Hope is a

Mortgage

In its final year

Regret

Is the third cousin who

Borrows

What he'll never return

Love

Hikes up the corners of the mouth

Like a saggy pair of

Jeans

Promises are lucky pennies

And

To this big potluck

He brings his dish-to-pass

Made with a

Recipe

He wishes not so much to be

Right

As to be kind

Autumn

The season that prompts

Poets

To scramble after

Wistful phrases

Like children

Chasing airborne

Leaves

Tomorrow

Is root beer float day

Anticipation

Effervesces through the

Antiseptic hours

Daylight slowly

Sips

The foamy shadows from

Vanilla walls

The bubbling conversation from the

Room next door

Turns to

Amphigory

In our twenty bed

Lotusland

We have not forgotten the taste of

Hope

It coddles the minutiae

A warm hand

A friendly

Voice

The hairdresser comes on Friday

Gravity

Patient as rust

And

As hungry

Colubrine forces constrict and

Define

These cages

This home

We show it no fealty

This

Bender of light

Space

Time

And its countless children

Idols

From the dawn of our exile

We worship the sons

But it is the

Father

That causes us to

Prostrate

Threads

Pulled free

From the sweater that

He only wore

Twice

A gift from she

Who

Tonight

Sits in frayed silence

Weaving in and out of a

Magazine

The strand of an earlier

Conversation

Taut until it

Snapped

Now dangling from his

Copious fingers

As he laments all this

Unraveling

Bookmobile

I loved to make them

Laugh

This older man

John

And a lady whose name I

Don't remember

From the moment I stepped

Into the big green bus that

Parked once a week

In the lot near

Our house

And squeezed my gangly

Teen-aged frame

Down the narrow aisle

Wisecracking

Pulling a joke book from the

Slanted shelf

And laughing for hours at the

Stupid

Inane

They knew where my young

Literary interests idled

And often brought new volumes

Hand-picked

I almost hated it when

Others

Came aboard and

Stole their attention

But I would help

Since I knew topics and titles

Sometimes better than

They

And after this many years

I'm sure

They're both gone

They've gathered the

Keys

As I've slid my stack from the

Narrow desk

Their faces

Voices

Laughter

I can never return