Tag: new-york

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Yesterday walking from the farmer’s market
My friend
Who is
Never wrong
Unfortunately
Asks me about the trip
I’m taking home
South
To see
A gang of friends
All of us this year 60
My friend says “You need to be prepared
For their health.” She says
“Do you know about their health?”
What the hell kind of thing is that to ask
I become wobbly
And I realize
We are dying
My friend who is never wrong
Unfortunately needs me to face
The inevitable
Age and death
Of friends, of myself, of all this.

Yesterday my friend who is
Never wrong
Unfortunately
Tells me as we walk
In her way
That she has accepted
Defeat and the end of the republic
Tells me to be careful what I say
In the South
So I don’t get in trouble
And I say
fuck fear
So loud
That Appalachia can hear me
Her lips purse,”Mmmm.”

At the kitchen table with her husband
My friend who is never wrong
Unfortunately says
“I have sad news. All the morning
Glories are gone. All of them are dead now.”
And I know I saw some on my walk the other day
Bursting in purple glory bloom still
But I guess it’s today they stopped blooming
And I missed it. I say nothing.
“All of them are gone. Sad.”
And I sit with my tea and my scone at
My friend’s
Formica table knowing I am wrong about
Everything
I guess
And don’t know how to be
With all this, all this death, all this unstoppable
Ending
“Sad.”
Mmmm.

On my way hope
I mean home
I buy a bottle of good red wine
“Hello, Sunshine,” says the employee
Who says I bring the light
Even as I wander out
Wonder how I will live
In red sips
Of this dark world.

Today
This new morning,
blue sky and sun,
I have a text from my friend
Who is never wrong,
“So I was wrong about one thing:
I still saw some morning glories this morning—
they’re there if they are facing East.
The ones facing South were gone though—
as they were gone yesterday.”

She was wrong about one thing.
And if she was wrong about that
One thing
She could be wrong about
(Fortunately)
Almost everything
And to everyone in America I say
Like the faithful who practice
In every faith
Face East, not South
And we, too, will not be gone.