Moonlight Sonata

It was the same idea

in the planetarium show:

sound waves

drifting ever outward

(above us: passing nebulae,

storms of asteroids, beyond the Milky Way

far beyond)

Where they were now? 

- the radio shows,

the essential speeches and cheering crowds

the rockets launching

and among these sounds of Earth

your piano notes

your Beethoven

(we would lay under the piano so the chords could thunder

through us, whole)

your laughter

our laughter all

drifting

like milkweed

away

gentle, present wherever it is

and happy still.

The Basement is a Psychological State

and the psychiatrist, directed you, "Go there.
But go alone.

Meet the demon."
I hate him for that.

It was too much, for you,
atremble with nightmares
alone at the end of your life
in the middle of your life.

I run my hand, here now,
along this brittle wallpaper.
I feel lives, and ours, flake away
under touch.  But that is not
the scary part.

Ahead is darkness
never-ending,
just there
or pulling us closer.

In time, we all enter, seeing nothing,
not even our own boundaries of self

sense: presence

We can hear him
breathing.

At some point
Erubus will speak.

We wait for that.

There is nothing else to wait for.

Brine

What pours off from this?

not just rainwater

not just tears

a kind of honey

a kind of medium

a broth

in which to stew

for years

and years

in loss

(the bannister railing

still almost-felt

underhand)

(a different future

still almost-there

underfoot)

The house surrounds us

- how? -

as if it is still there.

echoing

with a called out name.

Ghost pains, you loved

the idea of it:

The soldier with the amputated arm

still able to feel

the delicate plucking of a weed

flower.

How acute that made his love.

Sensation for the mind

alone.

callie

Callie

a tree with a name

a part of the family

broad, beech-tree,

old and gracious.

also ripped

from her roots

also shimmering

in memory

rooting anew

slowly

without place