Two Days Apart

We'd call him today on his birthday, two days before mine.
I don't know what I found to say all those years ago
to a man I saw for 3 weeks a year
who lived 14 states away,
who was 66 years older than I,
but we'd turn over the egg timer and we'd call.
Happy Birthday!
Thank you, dear, he'd say,
dee-ah he'd say,
then nothing I remember,
then my parents would talk
and then he'd say
In two days it will be my turn to call you.

He'd call.
We'd chuckle over the fact we'd just spoken
two days before.
Happy Birthday, dee-ah,
Thank you, Grandpa,
and then nothing I remember.

I remember more as we grew older together.
There was more than just the yearly trip to the country general store
where he'd buy me stationery or pens.
I'd helped him move from his apartment where he'd lived with my grandmother
into a new one, the first place he every decorated on his own.
He knew my young children. He stayed in my house
when we had a heat wave and the fans whirred in the living room.
We played gin and he let me win. We wrote letters.
I brought him to the hospital when he'd come to visit and my parents
had gone to dinner.
I flew to be with him when he died.

Today they pin poppies to lapels,
and put flags on headstones.
Today, I just think of him
and imagine he'll call.

Trespass

No dogs allowed but I brought her
and we walked past all the Our Town people
Merrill Walker Smith Morse Peabody
here lies with his wife
and the babies who lived for just months
with small angels with
tilted heads beside them.
The school bus drove past,
and leaves softly fell,
and we shuffled through.
The sun set beyond the yellow maples
and the man played golf on the other side
of the headstones,
hitting the ball and walking slowly
on the low lawn.

I found someone I knew.
She was who I would want to be,
generous and respected with only kind words
and gifts and an easy smile given to anyone.
I met her when I was just married,
at a seasonal museum
where a very old docent and I would sit and wait for cars to pull up,
for them to ask about the family,
the mother and husband,
the boy who was shot, or shot the mother.
I don't remember.

She came to the house to organize a tag sale
for the Colonial Dames.
I'd never heard of Colonial Dames
or a tag sale.
Women who had families
who had been on the Mayflower
brought antiques.
Not musty clothes from their basements or Avon cologne bottles shaped like cars or
record albums like Petula Clark or the Bee Gees. These were
ink wells and trivets and andirons and willow ware and tapestries.

She gave me
a china cup so thin I could see my fingers through it
and a candy dish from France
and an emerald green marble desk set she said
I was to give to my husband for our anniversary.

She'd lost her grandson to AIDS
when it was new and he was young,
and she made a home for young men dying.
And she wore a feather boa
And she invited me to her house for tea.

I walked past her today
where she lies with her husband,
and school children ride by,
and dogs chase squirrels,
and the sun lowers itself
into the ground.