For Kathy A.
Ah lady, so torn and tangled.
I want so to make you smile and laugh
and to share the secret spaces
where the little girl lives inside of you.
But sometimes those deep channels
of your pain and indecision just run too deep.
Its as if I’m in some crazy Italian movie.
I feel your life and see your pain
between the hours and cups of coffee
and these office walls.
And I see when you have to push to keep yourself together.
I can feel the struggle too.
Sometimes your phone voice is so professional,
I wonder where you’ve hidden yourself
and I ache for someone I know is in there.
I wonder, sometimes, what you would become
if you were freed to love.
Would your concentration then give way
to joyous competence
and would just staying on top
become the ride of a lifetime?
Ah lady, what I feel are my memories and empathy of you.
Your brown eyes so full of promise and pain.
They capture me again and again
until I stare … rapt and dumb
into someone’s soul so torn and lovely at once.
gallagher
09 apr 78
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —