An Old Girlfriend

.

     a family                                                                    
is coming in   as                       
Pahn finishes his dinner                     
with his comrades                      
at the back of a restaurant

The wooded canyon
with its floor of brown
and yellow ..bay leaves
in a blue light
like a sad and quiet love
cools
behind them

The members of the family talk and laugh
                                           subdued as
they find their places                           
and the last one comes smiling thinly—in his memory                                                                                
a woman from his twenties (Eithnia)
who he tried to keep
and lost completely
And a desire

                              like gravity
asks him     to go to her
and talk     while
                                                             a resistance—
                                                                     a shyness
makes him afraid

Pahn’s friends rise    and leave 
                                                                 and his reluctance is overcome

He goes to her                                                          
telling her his name                    
and explaining who he is
taking off his hat
                                                  to see if she’ll
                                                                       know him
      waiting for her reply

She looks at him and looks away

She has put her head down                                                                     

The sense                                                                                          
of her family’s conversation now                              
                            comes around the table
of a loss in the family

and Pahn looks down at her
                           asking with uncertainty

“Are you grieving”

And she responds                                                    
“Yes

My mother died

She died of breast cancer”

Pahn bends down to her ear                                                                   
with his hand on her back     
patting             
  and caressing

The fear from her body    and his
drains
onto the floor                                                    
and into the canyon                                                               
the canyon     that he walked in
alone and with friends—

the canyon that cools their lives
                       with its hard water and damp shade
the stream rippling soundless
in the blacks and the grays
of the wet gravel

and the dark flashing trout
that hide among the boulders

and her blue woolen sweater
that warms and soothes him

And his hands that were useless
to hold her then
cover her body with solace.

.