To hear cigarette as only a sound, none
_     _ of those ashes on the red leather,

Wild rose and no taste of fuchsia petals between my teeth,
_     _ bathing suits drying on the rocks –

And tapdance free of the clicking in Helene’s basement,
_     _ her red hair, it all coming undone.

Highway empty of the cold, all those songs,
_      asphalt_ buckled with frost,

And frost, not my fingers going numb, scratching
_     _ forests of it from those old storm windows –

Window minus the slate roof, slate minus
_     _ my father on the scaffolding every spring –

To feel autumn in my mouth and not be
_     _ back in it, shoes untied in a yellow classroom.

Let cemetery mean nothing,
_     _ no white butterflies, cold shade, no view of the

Ocean hear ocean devoid of the
_     _ noon whistle, the flag becalmed or gonging all night

In the wind.  To hear the clear absence of a life –
_     _ to stand under the streetlamp

Without any snow sifting down through the orange light,
_     _ without any histories stapled to the telephone pole.