Poem for Friday, March 28, 2014

Till the autumn tempests come to scatter the
flowers
    --So brief your thoughts of her.

                                  --from The Tale of Genji


So Brief Your Thoughts of Her

It is the time of the year
for our rituals: hanging up our coats, giving up smoking,

remarking on the fickleness of the sky. How strangely
we behaved. How often

we took for granted the
intricate signals sent from brain to mouth, the thoughts

forever tangled in our synaptic thickets. Sometimes, I
manage to think of you

perpetually dressed for
that first winter, telling me your name under the snow-

pregnant clouds. How wonderful your name, you lying
on the frost, lighting up

your menthol, pausing
between puffs to tell me this is your last one, you swear.