SHE HAS NOT EVEN A PHOTOGRAPH

SHE HAS NOT EVEN A PHOTOGRAPH

Her memory is accident-prone,
She wishes she’d been more sentimental.

Her thoughts are not at all arranged
Like slides on a Carousel projector.

And recollections are judges in long black robes
Who sentence the years unjustly.

While his bones rot, her brains ache
And she visits the gravesite with flowers
While rats scurry across the floor of her dreams.

She wishes Ouiji board miracles.
She wishes him back in his big black armchair,
Scowling behind his Economic News.

His body was him.
Physical presence is the name of relationships,
And she has not even a photograph vivid enough to comfort the scar
Or plug the fountain of scarlet blood.

Ghosts dance a slow dance, hold their white forms close.
She dances with the creaking floorboards,
And tries to French-kiss her wedding ring.
The little gold devil rests glued to her finger.

He stays glued to her veins and arteries.
She stays glued to her house with the cross on the door.

She collects obituaries from the Daily News
And widowhood is a crucifixion that bids her walk,
Spear in her side, easily down to her own demise.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 1983
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED