Between life and work taking turns to make me a punching bag, it's been a while since I've sat down to write anything at all. No mood, no inspiration...I guess they count as excuses, but my head's been full of all the stuff I need to do, with hardly any space for the stuff I want to do or write.
And then tonight, during choir rehearsals, our music director gave us a beautiful arrangement of 'In My Life', by the Beatles, and suddenly I'm back in Virginia, with this song playing in the while my oldest friend from university is picking me up to go back to his place in Richmond. After his sudden death five years ago, I've never been able to bring myself to listen to it.
Hearing it tonight though, loosened something in the tightly curled mass of stressbrain.
I miss you, Brian. I hope you can read this, wherever you are now.
****
THE LAST SIX YEARS
someone punches the ‘Clock Out’ button on one of the punch clocks of the universe and suddenly I’m the one who’s growing older now and you
aren’t. Didn’t. Frozen right at the moment your hand
reached for the bathroom tap and the machinery holding your heart together
broke
apart
and now it’s just me the crazy cat lady looking over
at the hypothetical lawn where the kids were supposed to play where you were
supposed to chase them off and instead there’s just the shadow of a deck chair
where you were supposed to sit
(grumpyoldmen do that you said and you laughed rubbing
your bald head ((a bald you deliberately chose by shaving rather than let
middle age take its tribute)) maybe we’ll be neighbours you the crazy cat lady and
me the neighbourhood grump)
the sky is full of clouds today and one of them is
like a white puffly smokewraith of a spritecat slinkslinking in the azure she
drifted for a little then dissipated into feathery cottontufts just as i
thought of you
i hope she rubs against your ankles i hope
you stoop to pet her and
feel the vibration of her purrs travel up your fingertips into your bones
translating all the things i never said all the years of your absence into one
universal sound the sound of tears the sound of rain
