I'm gathering up the bits of poetry
scattered at Patti's feet --
__burnt offerings, now charcoal
__moving against white paper
Here is the dark haired cop who sits
facing her at every party, the one who
gets drunk on her presence long before
the beer provokes his eyes to blurry slits
She is annoyed by his petulant silence
oblivious to the poetry he writes with the hand
he leaves on her knee
Here is the man she meets on a trip
to Florida, the Guardian Angel in a red beret
who she mistakes for a motivated man
being partially blinded by distance and her
favorite color. She marries him. He is as
layered as a sonnet but unable to withstand
poetic scrutiny
Here is the young blonde married man
with two small children and a wife who doesn't
understand all the things that wives don't understand
about true love,
or so he tells it, sitting on the couch
suffering through sad alliteration and longing for
Patti when she leaves
Here, briefly, is the friend who shows up
at her front door, naked beneath Saran Wrap
Here is the woman of games
who lies and cheats herself into this poem
with her large blue eyes and seductive smile
taking Patti on a painful trip, then leaving her
to find her own way out
These are the discarded poems
that fall like so much chaff
beneath the chronicle of Patti's one true love,
a confident woman of few words, who carves her
poetry in ironwood
and sets it on the mantle.
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