by Lucille Waters Younger (c)1999
She packed her bags, leaving you
to explain it all. Clean up the mess.
and for the next thirty years you tried
perhaps lied and maybe told the truth,
shifting realities, shell games and peek-a-boo
cramming sense into epithets of
senselessness, while
pictures of the brunette, frozen in poetic
frenzy, comatose yet seeing every movement
inching toward her end, while peering back
lifelessly at other suitors who would have loved
her better. But,
what else could you do? In death, you
tried to resurrect a team life shattered
with a poets touch of irony and a painters
brush of still life images that would not wilt in
sun, with steadfast colors that would not run
in rain or smudge in drops of tears.
You found that memories and gossip make for
images that stretch beyond the poets pin,
outlive original intent and youthful goals conceived
and screamed upon a mountain top, we want it all.
There is nothing fanciful in truth. It is not the
man who bit the dog and words are pull not push
like art or pain.
Consumed by guilt, regaled by throngs who
loved her because she died young and hated
you because you survived to live three decades
as a smoking gun.
Lucille Waters Younger
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Thursday, November 11, 1999
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