To Grief
August slips cool into a September porch swing.
Come sit with me and have coffee at 3am.
We'll speak without shame,
for we've been intimate for years -
since you found your place
between my husband's hips and mine.
We are one another's quiet addiction, each
the other's lingering suicide. I recognize
pain, my reflection, in your eyes, yet
I draw you in regardless.
You are my Marlboro man; save me,
but there is too much smoke -
summer stinking and thick with kudzu vows.
Autumn rings on some distant curve,
and with this dreaded friend, I pray.
Together we mourn midnights into dawn
on the whispered tune of our blessings:
Hurry, on the west wind to the seas, move them
with the tarnished arc of the harvest moon.
