2002/ruth

5:58 a.m.
sunrise
candles burning.
A distant rooster
breaks through
my morning music.
The sprinklers clang,
turning themselves on,
as do I, neck stiff,
pain between my
shoulder blades.
I tell you it means
I need love and support.
Everything does,
I always do.
Today is the funeral
for a woman I used
to know.
I haven’t seen her
in years.
I remember her now
in photographs,
the one someone took
as she stood by the gloxema
I gave for her 75th,
the one in bright pink
wearing an open weave
hat at our wedding.
My daughter adored her then.
The paper says she was
a draftsman,
but she was an artist
trying to break out until
the very end.
We met at a gallery
where she told me of the tortoise
shell she once drug home,
something she wanted to make
into art.
Hundreds of pounds,
whatever happened to it,
whatever happened to Ruth?

8/24/02