Dedicated to my father who captured some of these words from Love Lies Bleeding Don Delillo, 2005 in his diary years before he died from early onset Alzheimer’s in November 2019
When the sky has lost more buttons
and basil scents the summer air,
we will remember the snow on a Portland street in August
and its models cloaked in winter whites,
a haunting holiday recollection
unexpected.
In the end it’s not what kind of man he was, but simply
that he’s gone. The stark
fact.
Snow fell once in August on a Maine street. While, in another state,
our father slept a forgotten hospice slumber blanketed
in cold, conditioned air white.
The highway overpass’s
arrows had shown us the way
All points to Maine
as we navigated
the unfamiliar narrow
dark.
Later, after his passage, the pages
are so beautiful, we touch
them twice
work over the air
held by each word, each pause,
each breath
contained in his diary,
or in the dog-eared
books
where we magnify, still,
the magnificent, where
love lies bleeding.
