Hank

Western light

through a November

window.

Axial was the term

you introduced me to.

Like a horizontal searchlight.

Sunday afternoon

in your kitchen.

Oilcloth and newspapers

covered the table

where

three disassembled crabs

waited for our eager mouths.

Sourdough,

and a bottle of Napa red.

Your wife, the sexiest

woman I’d ever met,

leaned back into the sun

streaming through the window,

blew out a jet of Marlboro.

Laughed like she’d

just heard the funniest

dirty joke she'd ever heard.

I brought a box of photos,

you’d seen most of them before,

a few at a time, now I wondered

how you’d put them together,

which ones go where,

which ones to ignore.

That was close

to half a century ago,

and cancer took you

two years ago.

I kept thinking over the years

that I’d like to drop on by.

Every time I crossed the bridge

and looked up at your house

on the hill with the view

of the refinery.

Or maybe we could

walk up Columbus,

find a place that did

chops and vegetables

in the style we used to get

before class. two foot flames

roaring up from the skillet.

Wine served in water glasses.

Probably not, they closed up

a long time ago.

We’d find something new

and that would be just fine.

You died before I ever called.

I still remember the number.

I could use it as a PIN at the bank,

because I’ll never forget it.

And what I’d like to ask you,

is the same thing I asked

that sunny November afternoon

- which photos to choose,

those same ones from the seventies,

and which ones to ignore.

And I could share my poetry.

You liked poetry back then.

I didn’t get it, didn’t see

the relationship between poems

and photographs. Now I do

and now it’s too late to

eat crabs and drink Napa red.

No Marlboros or Camels.

No watching the lights

at the refinery, or flames

flaring in the night.