for Chris, Oct 31st, 2022

For the twenty-first anniversary of what might never
have been, the gift is bench, neither metal nor wood
alone but a fusion of both.
A bench, presented to the dirt, affixed.
The weathered slats re-oiled, re-stained.
The black, ornate frame watered to shine.
A plaque allotted the back with a few small words of once.
It looks like neither throne nor dais; no preceptor
or inheritor projects a will but a chill realm
for the dead, more a smoking zone amid the weeds & birds.
Did the materials ever speak of us?
We got past cotton, leather, flowers (mostly roses), wood, iron,
copper, bronze, and then you died.
Pottery was the ninth to hold fragility in.
Then I drank from the tin cup, the years of you
never again adding up & up until it’s twenty-one
since we met, weird night of disguises, music, lust
and the gift for this is bench, there is nothing else.
We never came close to silver, pearl, coral, ruby,
no approximate sapphire, never a shadow,
in the race to evening, of gold.