It’s just a standard rain, a standard day
pelting down like heartbreak
yes, it’s where we are today, and don’t you agree?
the blissful skies swam inverted
and then just basically opened up
on me, standing under the kind of umbrella
you took with you to Kiev
tears streaming like memory
chin on knees, watching tv,
what would we rent this time? what would we see?
pausing the tape, laughing -
it was the one thing we treasured most
perhaps because we knew it was the most fragile,
the most likely to disappear
a friend confused for family, or perhaps it was just your smile --
like rain, like heartbeats, like the place we were born
so far, far away
on a standard day, in a standard place
missing you
***
Lightning pulls toward the sad, shy soul
hip-deep in trouble,
I’m on this foolish 18-hole course, still seeking you
knowing I’m doomed, even before
the electricity surges up, ground first
to meet the sky half-way;
my heart is that convenient mid-point
bursting into flame
***
You’re gone; not much else to say, except
I’m gone, too,
into a night where lightning blazes across the sky
on the heels of ghosts in sheets;
memories wrap me in soft, static-y blankets;
I feel a bitter night on my lips -
pizza getting cold; tonight
presaging the taste of solitude
a hundred hollow pieces of ice
all stacked up, unable to melt
***
I persist in circumnavigating the world
on a “what might have been”
on wet sage, the smell of charred saguaro;
but even that will not stop
the heavens shedding their tears
on this standard rain, this standard day
we could almost forget
we both came from so very far away
*********************************************
