Fascicle of Amity: 8

Hank lives out of Amherst
where Suzanne keeps Sam
growing. Hank does odd jobs
in town, drinks beer with me,
we talk Margaret Atwood’s
poetry. Their rented mansion
hovers above a tobacco field.
Suzanne is dying of cancer.
Sam doesn’t know, Hanks says
he's too young to weep.

I could never live to die there,
but I admire one who did, 
the angel recluse born
without wings, long gone.

Suzanne dies, Sam grows full
of music, Hank writes poetry,
works with it incessantly,
knowing art is to be perfected
to become art. No one believes
this, and I remember only
wild nights with resurrection
after the horses rode me.

(24 January 2014)

copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander