Mid-Atlantic

Pink Dawn, Aurora Pink, Misty Pink, Fresh Pink, Natural Pink, Country
Pink, Dusty Pink, Pussywillow Pink, Pink Heather, Pink Peony, Sunflower
Pink, Plum Pink, Peach of a Pink, Raspberry Pink, Watermelon Pink, Pink
Lemonade, Bikini Pink, Buoy Buoy Pink, Sea Shell Pink, Pebble Pink, Pink
Piper, Acapulco Pink, Tahiti Beach Pink, Sunny Pink, Hot Pink, Sizzling Pink,
Skinnydip Pink, Flesh Pink, Transparent Pink, Breezy Pink, Sheer Shiver
Pink, Polar Bare Pink, Pink Frost, Frosty Pink, Frost Me Pink, Frosted Pink,

I went to his sixty-sixth birthday
dinner: sixteen years ago this past
November. I remember that it was at
Chelsea Central (his favorite restaurant:
great steaks) on 10th Avenue, and
that Ashbery was there, and a few
others, including Joe, impeccably
dressed and gracious, who picked up
what must have been (I thought
at the time) an exorbitant bill.

I remember him saying more than
once, “Joe always picks up the bill,”
then smiling a slightly wicked smile.

The night reduced to a siren, a sigh:

Beautiful boy on the treadmill

Glimpsed sweating through sweating glass —

My new moon.

Sylvia’ s moon: a smiling skull

Snagged in witchy branches; fossil

Brushed free of blackest earth.

My last moon: an orange ball at rest, for an instant,

On the grey lake.

Wish list: dining set and dresser,

Boombox, thin black tie, boy-

Friend à la Madonna’ s “True Blue”

La la la la la la la

Your moon (tonight): a clouded X-ray.

I stand at a corner and stare up,

Bewitched
the boys were out
in force

Drunken-
ness and lust

— and full moon
bouncing back
and forth that
black

above the bars

*

Last night
it burned
cigarette

tip
thru old
blanket

Lilacs look neon in fading light.
Death makes life shine:
a tiredness, a flickering between

ages, which is each age;
a piling up to tottering
and falling back to sand.

So much for cycle. The front door lock
sticks each fall when we’ re first back.
We are advised to oil it.

Olive oil in the keyhole:
again the old key turns.
Once again to meander

along the edge of water,
whether tideless sea or tidal river,
pushing the stroller, dreaming

It has arrived — the long rag rug
multiply folded. On top, one alien hair.
I put my face to the folds and smell despair
palpable as salt air
in all those rooms and houses, small and smug —
enclosures I passed through on my way where?

Sweet smell of phlox drifting across the lawn —
an early warning of the end of summer.
August is fading fast, and by September
the little purple flowers will all be gone.

Season, project, and vacation done.
One more year in everybody’ s life.
Add a notch to the old hunting knife
Time keeps testing with a horny thumb.

Over the summer months hung an unspoken
aura of urgency. In late July
galactic pulsings filled the midnight sky
like silent screaming, so that, strangely woken,

Sing now the heavy furniture of the fall,
the journey’ s ending. Strong Aeneas bears
deep on his shoulders all the dark wood chairs
and tables of destruction. Bruising, blunt,
they force his feet on up the war-scraped hills
past raped dead temples. All Achilles kills
litters the trail of sofa legs with other

The first retainer
he gave to her
was a golden
wedding ring.

The second — late at night
he woke up,
leaned over on an elbow,
and kissed her.

The third and the last —
he died with
and gave up loving
and lived with her.

My lady
fair with
soft
arms, what

can I say to
you — words, words
as if all
worlds were there.