
Empty Nest
I’m a year and a day
Into widowhood
Would that I weren’t
I loved my man
But one thing’s
Dead certain
At this late date
I’m not looking
For another mate
To warm my bed
Dancing Solo
Doing the Lindy
Downing the bar
How low can you go
Before you know
Where you are
Flat File
Sorting through
His drawings/
Prints/works on paper
I come across ones
I’d never seen
New friends
Among familiar faces
I'm an archeologist
Digging up the past
Eager to know
The whole picture
Aftermath
Moon over Ithaca.

Lake Cayuga, Ithaca. Photo: Margot Boyd
State of the Union
All but a couple
of his paintings are gone.
His ashes are in the ground.
Everything is emptying
But my heart
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Don’t ask me how I’m doing
I’ll just say
I’m doing fine
I don’t want to share my grief
The grief is all that’s left
The grief is mine
Spelunking
I promised myself
I’d write my way
Out of this
But the more I scribble
The deeper the abyss
I scrabble to make sense
Of the chaos
At a loss for words
That comfort and heal
No pitons to help
In this grueling climb
Not to the top
Just out
Juxtaposition
Within minutes after
His first twenty years’
Of paintings
Left the loft
The letter from
Upstate Medical arrived
“Ashes on the way”
Life goes out the door
Death enters
At Sea
Caught not between
A rock and
A hard place but
Trapped in innertia
And ennui
I squander my days
In random desolation
The future washes in
An inundation of isolation
I am a dead man floating
On a sea of loneliness

Thorncrown Chapel, Eureka Springs, AK
Architect: E. Fay Jones