08-23-2023, 01:17 AM
Circle
The rain clouds arrived full that day;
you'd been gone for five years.
I popped open a polka dot umbrella
and watched the raindrops bead,
slide, then descend.
There's a cemetery on the walk
to your house across town.
A great maple lives there, encircled
by three vines of English ivy.
It shelters a weather-worn stone,
inscribed with a name the same as mine.
Her stone says 1876-1905,
the smaller stone beside: 1905-1905.
It feels unkind to turn around
and leave the two behind;
I'll see them when I return.
Around your kitchen table,
you poured us tall drinks of soda water;
the fizz frothed and evaporated.
You shelter me now like tree canopy.
You put on the record we know so well,
placing the needle down with precision,
like marking the correct answer.
It played four times that night
as we came full
The rain clouds arrived full that day;
you'd been gone for five years.
I popped open a polka dot umbrella
and watched the raindrops bead,
slide, then descend.
There's a cemetery on the walk
to your house across town.
A great maple lives there, encircled
by three vines of English ivy.
It shelters a weather-worn stone,
inscribed with a name the same as mine.
Her stone says 1876-1905,
the smaller stone beside: 1905-1905.
It feels unkind to turn around
and leave the two behind;
I'll see them when I return.
Around your kitchen table,
you poured us tall drinks of soda water;
the fizz frothed and evaporated.
You shelter me now like tree canopy.
You put on the record we know so well,
placing the needle down with precision,
like marking the correct answer.
It played four times that night
as we came full