loss attenuating

the flagrant noise of misplaced desires
rattling in the confines of this elevator
shaft misnomered two thousand and eleven
you wore your converse sneakers slipping
in the rocks of foolish dances handing me
your memory from the downside of thirty
years infatuation your's and mine you left
again to frame the world in such a way
your fear that last march to valhalla or
the baptists hell whichever it only serves
to mark the sudden loss of memory that is
truly what you fear and what I fear also

and there is an ugly tune echoing
in my dreaming heart and you seem to
walk away from me in this vision you
have too much to do and I don't feel
important any more but then who was ever
important when the deadline is rung and
someone else has produced an obituary
with almost no relationship to your
heart: educator and world traveler
a man for all seasons, but now it is
winter

and I've Yorick on the mind
thanks to Jane in that one poem
I remember in my 20s this nightmare
vision of my own hands, the flesh
leaving as in a horror picture
the words flitting into air like
smoke disappearing in that knowledge
that time is itself a liquid
dissolving our memories and our
very lives into the great stew
the sea that laps at the Mother's
womb

I wish you were here Gary
& you are right: I will miss you
when you are gone
this heart is blind in the night