Letter to Mary
Mary, the darkness is back
Its long fingers combing the trees
Like a layer of black paint,
Oily, heavy.
The last few roots that I spread
Into this thin soil
Are also coming apart
Unraveling like a life in reverse.
We used to talk about being born
But more and more, these days,
I think that maybe it was really about being dead.
Even the trees are drowning,
These days, in my dreams,
and the last few roots are unraveling
and Mary, you are continents away,
and we no longer have Wednesdays at 3 PM
in West LA
in the quiet room, like an unbetrayed womb -
you were trying to deliver me, Mary,
tie me to the earth
so I didn’t drift away…
and increasingly these days I drift
and your voice is farther than ever,
your gentle reprimanding of my demons;
they are all back now,
bigger and blacker
than even the fog through the trees
clawing its way into that endless night.
And sometimes, Mary, when I can’t breathe,
I think about that lonesome child at the piano
At about 3:30 in West LA
On the day of our last session
And the peace I felt to think of terms
like synchronicity.
But if sadness is just a hunger of the soul
then my soul is malnourished, Mary,
and it has no long fingers to push away
the black night,
no rage to fight back
against all the wrongs,
it doesn’t even have many tears left
to weep over its wounds.
But Mary, most of all, I am frightened by its silence.