Now that I've unplugged the phone, <br />no one can reach me-- <br />At least for this one afternoon <br />they will have to get by without my advice <br />or opinion. <br />Now nobody else is going to call <br />& ask in a tentative voice <br />if I haven't yet heard that she's dead, <br />that woman I once loved-- <br />nothing but ashes scattered over a city <br />that barely itself any longer exists. <br />Yes, thank you, I've heard. <br />It had been too lovely a morning. <br />That in itself should have warned me. <br />The sun lit up the tangerines <br />& the blazing poinsettias <br />like so many candles. <br />For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. <br />I am busy watching things happen again <br />that happened a long time ago. <br />as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair <br />under a sky of incredible blue, <br />broken--if that is the word for it-- <br />by a few billowing clouds, <br />all white & unspeakably lovely, <br />drifting out of one nothingness into another.<br /><br />Steve Kowit<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/some-clouds/
