After the third snows –

I wait like the lamps in the trees
hanging in the dark breezes of the early Spring,
laced with shadowed branches,
slightly softened fingers of buds and night,
framed by random windows
where watchers, also alone,
keep some random vigil at this time
against the boredom or the fear,
which are both signs of depression,
or so she tells me,
Karen,
the one who has heard
all the stories I have lived
and nodded in her calm and knowing,
letting me know when my narrative
wanders away
with her attention
or from my path, the one I planned, the movement
that I sought and knew
or thought I knew,
or thought I wanted
the way I wanted to wake
with sunlight in green eyes
and to taste fish from seas
and always place the lilies in precisely one way,
so their smell would linger,
fill a room, and thereby
a time;
all desires for things that might
create a memory
that would last to the present,
stationary,
something settled in the
rapid drifting that I do;
so many plans listed
scenes decorated
and words spoked to Karen,
and then I look up
at night
and see them,
hanging in the trees,
like the beacon that you were
and the moment that we became.


GLS
4-29-90
9:29 p.m.