What have I missed since morning took her?
Not her voice, which often hauled me from the edge of sorrow,
Or her gambler's smile, or her eagerness to suffer.
Who'd been this tedious savior of my petty tomorrow?
Her cockeyed luck changed the game we played.
In a world bored by love, ours licked like lasers,
When we waled through that woody nave,
Down an unknown field of burrs, licorice, and wild ginger.
She'll be gone; She'll not return.
With a silent shudder i'll agree that what had been was not,
And all the words were words only lovers utter;
Real devotion was death's cool kiss on a face grown hot.
Where are our sighs and vows, the knots in our dendritic past,
The blue sky veins that crossed your stomach like lace,
The varicosities that children brought at last,
The way your hand found mine, and mind, your face.
Who was the fierce sentry of my fabled serenity?
Who worried about one last glass too many?
Who remembered everything that made me be?
The one who did illumine my life and left me.
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