Forbearance was the name they gave you
when they reached to the sky seeking audacity,
seeking solace and power and belonging and
reaching for a world outside their own to find
the grinning pale-faced moon in limbo,
whom I had thought to be
cradling the euphotic sea
as I tried to gather the sands from the shoreline,
afraid that the tide would swallow them.
Forbearance was the name they gave you
before you fell face-down in Vietnamese soil,
before you became the gun-shy fool who couldn't pull
the trigger. You are the lost child,
the virulent Picasso
who I had turned to to light
those aphotic places even the moon's phosphorescence
had forgotten.
Forbearance was the name they gave you
as you stood waiting, growing old among weeds;
the rose I could no longer tend to,
and you only wilted in the field. You are not
the name you used to be,
and your future begins to dim, soon
to burn out like a street light in a city that never sees
the sun.
Forbearance was the name they gave you,
when that world was alive,
when we were both young and time
had not yet eroded us.
And now the sun is in euphoria,
resting with the promises of Alcmene,
now has vanished the brimming moon,
now the sea shrieks out of tune
like an infant torn from its mother's grasp.
Forbearance was the name they gave you,
but you are not who
you used to be.
You have become a part of your own distant world,
the old widow drinking sherry and inhaling cigar smoke,
filling your lungs with translucent hope
and dying among the weeds.
