In Memoriam: Francine Wiley
I have reached
To this sad height,
Remembering you,
My sister.
At last,
I understand you,
When I wish, instead,
That I could rave
Against the dying
Of the light.
The twin peaks,
The foremost peak.
For years,
I sat here mesmerized
By the power
Of the panorama.
Today,
The wind is stiff
And steady.
I witness
A tentacle of fog
Snaking far into the city
On my left.
Another
Uncoils to my right.
I feel the viscous body
Massing at my back,
The maw at my neck.
I dare not turn.
Already,
In front of me,
The glistering beauty
Gauzes over;
The wisps of white
Become a web;
The city goes opaque
And is lost.
I turn to face my hades,
Like others of its kind,
A darkscape
Of indeterminate shadows.
Their stains lengthen
With the ending of day.
In this atmosphere
Of raining mist,
The sun has no warmth.
Immense, white,
More a halo
Than an orb,
It encircles
The opposite peak.
I sit,
Pulling up my legs,
Placing my head
In my hands,
A lost soul.
What is a poet,
After all,
But a writer of epithets.
A sometime prophet,
Or seer,
Finally, he is someone
Laying his brethren
To rest,
A peaceful communicant
In cowl and shroud,
Who walks beside a still water.
Soon,
Under the spokes of the clematis,
He must lay himself down
To join them.
Always his companions,
Their whispering voices
Beckon,
Indistinct, one from another.
Harbingers,
They foretell of a muting
Of the muse. But,
I shall not lay nor listen today.
Even if my quill becomes
An arrow to the bone,
Ever the priest,
I commemorate you,
In turn,
With a final rite of words.
A red rose, a white rose:
One, the flower
Of your fervor
To be chosen,
To be seized up
By the embrace
That breeches paradise.
This was your soul in bloom,
Until it was refused.
The other, an emblem
Of the winter’s cold,
And those who sleep
Beneath the snow.
On their behalf,
I gift it to you.
(I stick it to you.)
I would fold it into your body,
A memento of what never was,
What could never be
For the likes of you,
Or the likes of me.
My sister.
I am a God fearing man.
I join my brethren
In the common prayer:
“Have mercy on her soul.”
And now,
The letting go.
Started: 2008
Finished: July, 2011
stevengoldenpoetry 