Saturday, August 24, 2024

buried deep June 10, 2012

 



 When she buries it, 

she digs deep,

 pats the loose soil 

until it is solid again.

Then moves on,

 leaves no roses to 

remember it by,

 not even looking back 

except in dread that

 it might rise up

 out of the earth to harm her, 

feeling nothing else 

over its loss,

 just the practicality

 of being rid of it,

 once it has gone,

 she in the window

 of her kitchen,

 smoldering cigarette 

between her lips,

 her brother playing 

music on a paper clip, 

the only dirge love gets 

once it is dead,

 like a bad joke, or worse, 

one with a predictable punch line, 

she, piling on, 

pushing this thing 

she never wanted 

back down just to keep it

 from haunting her again,

 a presence in the present 

she needs to keep in the past,

 it, me or whatever else,

 an afterthought,

an engraved memory 

on a marble slab or perhaps, 

not even that, 

a lost soul among all those 

other lost souls buried beside it.


email to Al Sullivan

No comments:

Post a Comment