Elegy

Bitter lips, for me; you spoke so sweetly
of other men and other times.
Your words cut in stone, your steel bursting
into flame. You could have been this life's rose.

But I remember you where you have never lived.
I could have told you many things, the aegis of your dreams
the child we'll never have, the song we lost that spring.
But denial is its catholic pose, against all natural light.

Alas! The lines I gave you cut me now.
And sometimes well meant lovers never meet.
I cannot understand the figures in the shadows.
You lie in a languid pose I seldom saw,
gold threads of waterfall cast round
those eyes with worlds now locked inside.

But in your many other Queendoms
the flags and roses rise together,
in stories I may know when I am only old
and just remembering.

Give me one last kiss, this lifetime
Darling, on your altar in this photograph
I'll keep. I'll remember you as long
as I can stand it. I'll tell another story
into another cup of wine.

I wrote this quite awhile ago, as an experiment about how I might feel as time went along and I no longer knew Alison, or I might have heard she had passed on. It will eventually happen, of course. AG had a very fine poem in her chapbook, LFNS, which had the line "I might be old and just remembering" in it. She already had a certain horror of aging, and yet an infinity for it. She was good friends with Jane Morrel, who was in her 70s most of the time we knew her. Alison also had a singular relationship with her grandmother. She later wrote quite a good poem based on that, using her grandmother's life as a way to explore age and death. Being a catholic girl Alison had an unnatural interest in death. Not a fearful one, of course. Part of her charm was an insane courage. This poem is nearly classical in its structure. Yet, it feels like it might break free at any moment.