Waking — Erik Satie & ducklings long ago

Verses

In the back of my head
Deep somewhere in my brain
At the level of my eyes comes
The shrinking thought that Jim is dead.

Chilling — learning it as if
for the first time once again

It came in the morning as I woke

And I realized I’ve had
this experience before but
it did not register.

This means I spend the night in a dream world
Where he has been alive with me.

So I do dream of him.
He comes to me in dreams.

But waking not just a reality check
(What a phrase.)

It’s a clutch in my consciousness,
tight desperation – that I can’t go beyond this
to outside the awareness.

I’m then in no where.

Turn back I’ve
no one to turn to
who can understand
what he was, what it was for us

So I lay there with the cats
one curled under my arm,
the other tight against my body.

After a while the alarm he set up rings
6:30 and I get up to put food out
for the waiting cats
On the butcher block kitchen table
he bought so long ago now
look about, read about modern obscene
luxury monumental trash buildings

The house he left me in
by contrast so unspoiled
it makes visitors uncomfortable.
“Most people make some show”
one woman said.
“What kind of show do you mean?”

Largish rooms, book-lined walls,
Except where there are windows,
Quiet

I like the wooden bare floors.

I breathe easier in here.
Knowing this is what he & I liked.

Jim liked Satie a lot, there was a time we’d walk down to the Potomac (before the park became as “renovated as it is today) and watch the ducks and their ducklings nesting and playing by the water’s edge

Sylvia