Mark Katrinak
The countless cigarettes and regulations,
I smoked in heavy rain—butt-end of jokes,
expensive habits, coughing riddling me;
the autumn leaves disseminating on the walk,
I didn’t turn a final time to take
a look at you, that there was one more gift
exuding from your irises I could
have memorized; no patience, not one ounce
to watch a maple leaf detach, descend
in Technicolor to its end; to not have stared
deeply into the homeless woman’s eyes,
hesitant of an answer there; we did
not make love frequently which made love less,
less than what two were capable of, time
edging closer to what was meaningless;
well-struck, a childhood’s worth of sitting ducks,
a kid not striking back; obsessive with
your beauty’s potpourri, I failed to amend
your roots, if only water of a single tear;
that day I hurried out of house my prayers took
a turn for worse, worse than a nun imagines;
my well of tears ran dry and yet the grief
remained—I’d settled in a droughty place,
roots cracking through the earth and burros down
to straw and bone; for sake of nicotine,
yellowing resting on my fingertips;
beyond these facial lines those sadnesses
left unmentioned, December’s clinging leaves
dismissing their inevitable, wind-blown
expulsion from the oaks and sycamores.