And Yet Another Forgotten Poem

 Your Mouth A Cave

 

 

I fell and fell and fell

for one year, black

the bouldered walls 

the circle of stone

in that one episode

you know the one

where the British detective

is always too late to prevent

the second murder, the body

in the well.

                        The first

murder is without metaphor.

 

But I was falling down that

well, that cave, it’s stony

circle glittering with stars

green cities drowning in

the half-green moon below.

 

I kept it’s image on my phone.

 

In midst of two thousand

shots of friends and flowers

and dogs, our dogs, and San

Francisco, New York, Seattle,

 

there in the middle of things,

in medias res, is your

 

dead face, mouth agape.

 

For one year I kept

that image with me near

that other one of our dead dog

remembering that curly hair

against my face

after the death chemical

coursed through her.

 

Birdy about to receive the needle.

Another Forgotten Poem

Miró's Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit, 1947,

In España

 

 

Our first time in Europe

Miro was everywhere in Madrid.

 

Oh Ghost, do you remember?

The gallery, the museum, the

 

posters on the busses, how the

wild squiggles and balls commanded

 

walls around the city. How

we found the little restaurant

 

Rick Steves recommended,

before he was Ricksteves.com,

 

there beside the railroad bridge

that bore a Miro-like graffito.

 

How the tiny fried fish were

so delicious, bones and all.

 

And now you’re in the earth,

bones and all, but not this

 

presence. This unpredictable

presence. How like you it is.

 

How like this strange and beautiful

symbology of black, white, blue,

and red, the spiders and sperm,

the bodiless hands, and sweet

notes the memory of you

arising like a Miro unrolling

on an early, pre-intel laptop screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

kakehuck (c) 2023 

 

 

Back at The Haven

 After letting a couple thousand dollars of unused time slip away from me I am finally back at the Haven, looking out the window at the boarders on the river.  It would be fun to be out there if I had someone to go with.  Someday.  

I've decided to start coming in at 3 pm for a beer and some time at the computer.  Mid-afternoon and early evening is a lousy time to be at home or with the dogs anyway. So Sequel and Winston are inside.   I don't know where Miss Poppy is but she'll show up when I go back home.

Dear Will:

I thought of you last week when I spent $7 on a handful of apricots. I remembered the fourth Salt Lake residence, the polygamous house, with the giant ancient apricot tree in the neighbors' yard.  I remembered getting up on the roof and bagging pounds and pounds of cots. You made jam that we froze and ate the rest of the year.

Missing you,

Love, Kake

As I review the writing I'm going to be putting together at The Haven this month, I ran into this poem, written since Will died but I don't know when.

WILL AND HIS GRACE

(c) kake huck 2023

You were happy
when that poem about 
us fucking on the side
of an almost empty highway
in the middle of Nevada
made it into an anthology

but not so joyful
when I performed
my money-making,
award winning
poem about the woman
artist I delighted in
New Mexico ...
it displayed my naked
pirate heart.

Nevertheless, when
I asked how you managed
living with those poems
with those confessions,
(by which I meant, of course,
with me)

you said, with your gangly,
earthy, angelic grace, "It's
just a life in the arts, I guess."

And put your arm around
my shoulders.