On A Letter From Lynn

 

Like the last living member

of a marooned starship, hoping

when he hears after years a

voice, a beacon of humanity in the void

of Death.         

Or like Richard Dreyfus,

whose maddened quest for a close encounter

drove him over sanities edge, when above

that edge the answer unexpectedly

winked and dragged him back.

Or Thor, mighty thunder god,

after a nearly lost war, when gracelessly

he finds the Apples of Idun, golden

fruits of Immortality.

 

Just so, like an orphan on his

First Christmas with new parents did I read

this Rosetta parchment of yours, tiny

crabbed runes embellished with

you-ness, evoking your feelings to

the Elements Four.

 

The trees surrounding my dour

red-brick asylo-apartments released

dying leaves to cascade on winds

timeless, seeking merest life in some

new homeland, and the grass stretched

Heavenward, futile yet hopeful,

ever Human.        And in the ensuing

calm of this freeze-frame day, with

margaritas for legs

and Pink Floyd for backbone, I finally

came to terms with what we had,

what we gave up, what we may someday

resurrect, though cocooned in our prides

and blue monasteries of hurt we, like

some bedsitter monk may reach

morose truths while mired in our ridiculous

emotions--

 

 

   -- Or at least I'd like to hope so,

   reposing in a tequila bottle, drinking

   self-pity like life, as I

    buzz through half-glimpsed memories

 and visions of us on antipodal

   merry-go-round horses or crashing

  waves in a sea of Hardy's Crass Causality,

   worming my way past dinners

 and bowling and movies and parties

    that finger my softened mind

  and remind me of what I forsook.