Forensic Habit

I stole her fingerprints
like you would have
mad oriental friend.
I hid the glass,
carefully wrapped in a handerkerchief
behind the files of old letters.
Later I watched the cubs
lose to los angeles
knowing you would have
cheered the Dodgers.
Ah, there was magic in your voice
in my dream, there were women
and words and rice wine
and the sweet red calligraphy
of the martian seas
and its your exploration now—
I can only watch.

but I will keep the fingerprints
for your analysis
should I prove lucky enough
to live to see
your return.

She disappeared
in the central highlands anyway.
I've no wish
to convict her.

It's just
we always
preserve the clues
even when we do not know
what they mean.

(For a great deal of the later 1970s and early 1980s the figure of Keye Luke, the actor who played Jimmy Chan in the Charlie Chan movies, remained a major icon in my poems. The conceit was that we explored Mars together and mapped its surface. This poem also has many elements taken from Ross MacDonald, the remarkable mystery writer. McDonald's classic story inevitably had a current mystery and a mystery from the deep past that was involved with the main story. I sought this structure in my own life and never quite found it. But I know that it is there.)