For Barbara Blazier on the Anniversary of her Death

AXIS MUNDI

That new-green of your eyes
a circling avarice of the senses,
and the hair burnt red to the
farthest edges of autumn;
a warrior's fusion of form to purpose.

That day with the thief in the kitchen,
how you knocked him on the head
with the lid of a garbage can.
"But didn't he have a gun?" I asked.
And I think for that question,
you pitied me.

"It's true," you said
in the doctor's office,
"Everything is energy."
You were reading a medical text
standing up, one foot set against the other,
one hand fisted, twisting at the wrist, your
voice echoing up the caverns
of your bones until it whistled through your teeth
and you laughed,
confirmed in all that you were
which was - everything. To me.

Come, come, let's get drunk!
I've got it! The diagnosis!"
Forward, always forward.
Ribbons followed you, sparkle, confetti
and rose petals; such things that catch
in the wind and are too light
not to move.

We walked out into the winter,
late in the afternoon and
ended at a bar on 96th St.;
some jutting mass of Paleolithic rock
thudding against the sunshine.
I toasted your health,
the good news, the banishment
of uncertainty.
You corrected me
with a tired, Greek-like sigh
for your doomed philosophy.
"To my existence. The shard of it
that's left to me."

I'd always thought my life
had no trajectory
and yours
had no repose.
But now I follow you
forward, always forward,
because you pull at me
with your silence.