Forty-five years later it is unshakable.
At 16 he thought her
her ankles, lips
more province of art than kiss
& when she slipped away to San Diego
it was as if his hometown
had been emptied out
with nothing left to requite
After college he routed a flight
through San Diego so he could
spend the night walking Harbor Island
across from Lindbergh Field
nursing his ache for her
as the water lapped in the nearby darkness,
knowing only the location
of an asterisk by the city's name.
Cocooned in
refrigerated memory
her backhand continued to improve,
she became an expert
in Aztec character sketches
& they frequented a small village
on the Chilean coast
where she had promised
they would swim a nude's distance
out into the Pacific
& they often returned to a favorite cabana
where they read Lorca aloud,
& scrambled Borges
with private hieroglyphic
they had forged as correspondents,
his looped cassette of Fireball spinning
as sea salt dried in their hair.
That became the routine --
the imaginary reconstruction --
pristine as her aquiline temple
caught in a photo another man took of her
willed her immortality if he could
meanwhile the butcher of time hacked & sliced
until he was forced to admit his
unsuitability as her lover
cursed the roar of her absence
decades had not broken
more the unfinished foundation
meticulously begun
Was Mission Valley their Milky Way
seen from her dining room
as he, transfixed, held her
or just a neighbor's headlights silhouetting them?
Less frail the inverse:
his smooth river rock recall
poised uncluttered,
more perfect than love
for Merrilee
September 2011