POEM

another poem for marie who died


i remember cruising with you down the boulevard
in your little blue car. we talked about quakers
and poets and traumatic brain injury and art
and reasons for things that had no reasons
and the moon and the stars and vision.

we were the hood sisters, you said. we both wore
our gray hooded sweatshirts proudly,
with the zippers down. you in your french chapeau
and me in a faded baseball cap trying to keep
the sun out of my eyes-- we both
had overcome so much, had lived through
so many nightmares. we laughed richly
knowing that the regular people
and the therapists and the docs and the mhps
did not know, would not know, and
could not know the utter joy
of it all, of dreaming, of being.

our laughter was the sound
of distant worlds colliding--we didn't know it that summer.
the sticky sweetness of rita's ice
and of hindi tobacco and women singing
in graceful saris gave way to a bitter
bitter reality for which even the poets
had no words.
you left that early november
morning when the church bells
were numb before even god
could wake and smile.

~sapphoq