I transferred loyalty from you
to your assignment – Castaneda’s
Teachings of Don Juan, reading
easier than traveling to Thailand
and accepting any level of vow –
you didn’t make me any promises,
but with early breathing in
your teaching’s delicate atmosphere,
now at last my tepid soul calmly
moves toward greater fervency

simplicity embodied, he almost had
a cartoon father’s repertoire of
standard gags and gambits – after
retirement, ran into some problems
more tangled and thorny than
anyone anticipated on this particular
channel – was possibly released from
private torment by a tender
new connection with the preemiest
of his daughter’s triplet babies

catalyst, your alchemy of silver
made a difference water blue
arrows from your eyes sky
blue sparkles in the sun –
someone I had fun suspending
time with someone like mercury,
sending nervous silvery messages,
but your winged feet were always
bound, and soon I found exposure,
even the slightest, toxic

stuff you know you know
and stuff you know you
don’t know – and stuff you
don’t know you don’t know
until you find it in the grim
results of googling – husband
marine, a colonel, dead
at 47 in 2004, not
killed in Iraq, but by
an illness while on leave

young man plagued, aches and
pains at work innumerable as
spikes in the gel helmet
on his head – do they
belong to him or to
his wife, mother, father, family,
friends? happiest when revisiting his
childhood camp – he wants to
be a happy camper, his
favorite TV show is “Lost”

voted most happy go lucky
in high school, her salutation
in my yearbook reads “dear Elsie,”
says we had some laughs –
red-haired Irish girl who really,
reliably, non-dramatically, truly
was a friend – how do I know?
she came up to whisper
“your slip’s showing” when
I was at the blackboard