1.
Reunited in an Olympic size pool
in Paradise Valley after we had emptied
the last house I would own
needed every gallon
to slip tired, humbled
into an hour of rented opulence.
"Good job, this dismantling," she did not say.
"Now to begin anew
or don a colorful endgame mask?"
I the condemned, she the apologist
glided silence-buoyed beneath waterfalls
knowing well what we swam to elude.
In the sand drifts of later monologues,
she was maven of itineraries --
Ellis Island inspections,
tours of freeze-damaged Saguaros,
surveys of Broadway holdovers, Hohokam ruins,
imminent extinctions
came to understand
the importance of lesser journeys,
their significance embalmed
in the conveyances of travel
for later excavations
proof we had not walked only for walking's sake.
"Meet in Magdalena," she proposed.
"coordinate by coordinate,
East by Southwest,
detangled, to drift unpropelled,
unaccompanied
a la cantina pequeña."
Mulling the proposal's
Dos XX and Tecate neon
blue and yellow wall tiles
Biscaynes and Corollas parked outside
disapproving ghost of Kino lurking
where his horse had once been tied.
street dust rising up
to low-lying rooflines
indoors candlelight-mixed,
the possible ramblings
seemed confections dipped
into syrup of common blood.
Mulling unanswerable queries
of siblings, grandchildren, Washington pundits,
just how trite was warhorse repertory,
why from a hospital bed at 15
I had shot a painful insult she never forgot
However hard I worked to dislodge the arrow.
She would take a menu
from a waitress with seis ninos
order an unsalted margarita
and something a child might have ordered
in sure but thickly accented Spanish
say "You look tired."
2.
When I glance over with a smile
It is an empty seat on a New York traincar
& a draped newspaper,
half-headline of no importance
& disapproving void
all that remained of its last reader.
Below it a tear
in the seat of the fabric
where time bore down on memory
knifed down an old causeway
in its wake stitch-ripping
for easy disappearances.
Everywhere litter of failed repair,
rails wet with fluid, adhesive or blood;
repair crews in the next car
working against time, their Mio Babbino Caro
& Missa Solemnis on repeat, their midair
alcoves of hesitation or grief their soldiering-on.
3.
I was thirsty for lemons
in deep bottom glasses
taste the bitterness of lapsed attention.
A grim Magdalena prepares the drink
"Thought you'd left this Valley. Headline?
Missed rendezvous, stranger. Didn't you hear her calling?"
Yes. Just now. Imploring me to stop
with intonation familiar, irrefutable
as the rows of empty seats ahead,
the perfected hum
the absent singers' songs
in places you made opulent.
Repeating yourself to me
as though yours was the only voice
marooned in Paradise Valley
Valley so deep,
Valley so low,
so finite beyond the
sweetness of your plans
November 2011
for Billie