On this hemisphere
leaves fall in March.
My love for you was deciduous.
It left when you left,
but always there remained
the premonition of its return.
We used to fuel each other like gasoline
if only for short stretches of time,
brief as an Antarctican summer.
You were footloose, flighty,
flirted with Buddhism and Zen
and lots and lots of people,
and hadn't stopped to consider
inherited morality in years.
Your mother invited a priest,
arranged for the open casket,
phoned everyone to remind us
to wear proper black, not leather.
A few people are even playing along,
sobbing theatrically,
like they hadn't known you at all.
I feel ridiculous just
standing at the back, rolling my eyes.
I've never understood those who
leave elaborate wills,
the posthumous tyranny of precise
funeral arrangements,
but if this is what you get
as an alternative,
I have to say:
you could have done us all the courtesy
of thinking up a more fitting way to die,
for example dropping into the lion pit at the circus,
getting swept away on the open sea,
going hiking in the Himalaya
or tunneling in the Valley of Death.
Not this: keeling over after a nice lunch
on a pavement in Greenwich Village,
your heart stopped at 39,
your body left at the mercy of inherited morality:
That's what you get for living too fast
too fast
too much
too soon.
You were worse than a child and I love you,
but now you've gone and done it,
they're lowering you, bringing you down, underground,
and you won't be coming back up
like Persephone, in September
or next March, depending on the hemisphere,
and worse luck.