I always loved you best
in those cottage summers.
We sat on the edge of the dock,
children’s feet dangling
to tempt the fish.
Your gleaming cello sang
you away from me to private tutors,
teachers in Paris.
I didn’t know then about
the other music,
the voices that spoke only to you,
seduced you,
cello smashed and silenced.
You chanted Beatles lyrics to me
like psalms of deliverance,
hand outstretched to fell trees,
demolish churches,
dragged me into traffic
the red lights beckoning you.
You’d vanish for days, then reappear,
hobbling curb-foot, gutter-foot,
heavy-lidded and death-masked.
The medicine left you so cold and empty.
You set fires in the middle of rooms,
slashed open your veins to the heat.
I wanted to wrap you
in the old cottage eiderdown
we’d take to the lake’s foggy dawn,
to keep you from the final leap
I knew you’d take,
flying up to meet the sun.
