Where have you gone??
2010 May 23
Created by Tom 13 years ago
To Karen, in Hospice, May 2010
Where are you now, in your drugged haze?
Where is the Karen who loved and hated,
whose passion froze and melted hearts and raised plants and hell
whose breath coiled with created and channeled images,
the gnarled life of the past, the stories bursting into now,
and the well-supported dreams of her lover?
What swarm of locusts has devoured
the rich harvest of that caring heart?
You, who have world-watched like Alpine towers
and thundered with lightning-pierced rage
at its degradations and its cruel ways --
mists and pillows fog your mind,
once alive with peonies and crows and Greek-island light,
now leaving you, leaving me, barely in possession of memory,
wandering where purpose slips away at every turn,
sleeping life into oblivion -- you, who wanted to go
with clarity and intent, now fuzz and slumber
towards the dark buzzards of nothing.
Death is taking you, underhandedly,
without even waiting for your say-so.
I tug at your mind for attention, for decision,
but you have gone and everywhere the mist drifts in.