Robert J. Roe

From “Interplanes”

YOUR bundle of balanced hair, beloved—soft, silky, letting lights

Slip down to darkness;

Juggling lights fantastically, colored lights dripping like the chords of dreamed music;

Your eyes absorbing blue, giving out blue

As though your face were turned forever to an unseen sky;

Your hands pointed like almonds,

White like ivory traced with blue enamel:

These are gone.

I see these

No more.

Gus, the romantic lad, plays old plaintive melodies on the mandolin,

Trying to make me know he understands.

But I am feeling the slide

Of your hand on my forehead,

Hand like weather-stained ivory

Written on in faded blue ink….

I have chords of wistful music

Crowding for you to open the gate,

To drift off like smoke

Over aged hills.