in the paper,
"people
and places who have
made me what I am"
flings me back to last
weekend’s news. The
lost dead, some still
tugging from under
ground with their
scotch on my just un-
wrapped polka dot
sheets. The gone
fingers, each a book I
can’t stop reading,
photographs still in an
upstate bedroom drawer.
I sketched the bed
they lifted my mother
from in purple
velvet, her shape
still in the egg crate foam.
Some days I’m the snow
lovers made angels
in. And I’m also
that shape they left
night fills. Too often it
is best in memory:
mulled cider in barn
wood rooms, mornings
under a mobile of
what was when his cats
were my cats
Lyn Lifshin
