LORI
I search through twenty years to unearth the truer
Memories of a love when I was ten
And he was nineteen, my big sister’s boyfriend.
They told me he died. The focal lens is blurry,

A receding image veiled in scenes of muted
Grief, my sister ashen, hectic, wild,
And the kids at school whispering suicide.
Overlays of the crisis time pollute

Remembering. Let me return to the truth of my thrilling
To his games and songs and stories, his smile, his dancing
Eyes, his giant strength, a brother’s, a man’s.
My sister’s love for him was maturer, fuller.

Mine was soul to soul. Do souls inhere
In bodies? Who can trace the true frontier?

(40, August 6, 1992)