Some Clouds, by Steve Kowit

Now that I've unplugged the phone,

no one can reach me-

At least for this one afternoon

they will have to get by without my advice

or opinion.

Now nobody else is going to call

& ask in a tentative voice

if I haven't yet heard that she's dead,

that woman I once loved-

nothing but ashes scattered over a city

that barely itself any longer exists.

Yes, thank you, I've heard.

It had been too lovely a morning.

That in itself should have warned me.

The sun lit up the tangerines

& the blazing poinsettias

like so many candles.

For one afternoon they will have to forgive me.

I am busy watching things happen again

that happened a long time ago.

as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair

under a sky of incredible blue,

broken - if that is the word for it -

by a few billowing clouds,

all white & unspeakably lovely,

drifting out of one nothingness into another.

from Mysteries of the Body, 1994 Uroboros Books
Copyright 1991 by Steve Kowit.