THE HEAT OF GOOD-BYE

(Dedicated to Dee, who reminded me I'd not written it yet)

Everything was hot...simply all the world...
   as she knelt there in the sand
        beside the hot reality of his fallen form,
             sun beating on his paling face,
                   on her unraveling hair,
                        and the heat had baked away what passed for pride.
He was going, oh, gods, he truly was,
   she could see it on his face, in his eyes,
        that he was leaving, already almost gone,
             and the heat of such a knowing burned her heart.
                    How COULD he be going
                          now when the deed was done,
                                 and she needed him to stay there at her side?
Sand blistered through her garment
    as awareness of his dying seared its scorching way
          through all the pumping chambers of her heart,
               and she thought her tears might boil,
                     sliding hotly down her face,
                          but it was not important that she cried.
All that really mattered was that when he left her lonely
     she would have her hand upon him as he went;
          and though he walked to others in the fields of  his being
               part of her would pull with him through the gate...
                     drawn with him to that place where he would bide.
She stretched her fingers outward to the barely-breathing chest
    and lay them on the altar of his heart,
          not even...then...not really, feeling as the heat
               of a silvered stallion's head seared her flesh
                      when her palm rested on its metaled hide.
All the world...her world...was blazing...
    what was a bit more fire
          as her dream of possibilities
                melted into petaled sand
                     and the swinging of the gateway of his going
                           refused to have its opening denied?
"Go," she whispered in her gifting
        in the breathless heat around her,
             and she watched as his half-lidded, shadowed eyes
                   turned briefly in farewell, a movement barely noticed,
                         as his lips parted slightly
                               ...and he died.
Had there been heat before...here where she was kneeling?
    No matter, it was nothing like the aftermath of death...
           a furnace that exploded in her body fully
                 in that vast and empty place his going left,
                        that vaulted soar of lostness
                              that tore her soul completely, ripping wide.
And it was only later, in the evening of the day,
    when she sat upon the tiles of her room
          in the place her legs had failed her
                 and she could walk no further
                        beyond the billowed curtains
                               where other eyes no longer pried
To see the breaking of her heart
     as she stood on some soul-known mountain's top
           and saw all her valleys burning
                  with no store of grain to feed her mourning mind
                         and get her through the famined days
                               of  the coming winter's long and endless slide.
It was then she looked upon it,
    that palm where clearly, as though carven,
            his horse...HIS silvered horse...
                  had marked deeply in her flesh
                        and forever on her hand
                             would always ride.
She smiled as she saw it, knowing,
     with the understanding only pain can ever bring,
           it was part of him he'd left her,
                  burned beyond removal in her life...
                         with trembling lips she bent and kissed it,
                                even though her tears had not yet dried.

By Jo Anzalone 11-27-2006

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

BACK TO POETRY INDEX