[of i’ll never know where, likely
the home they built the year
i was born, wild in its stone,
its cave- and creek-lined flanks,
its scruffy yard pimpled with cedars,
lantana beheaded by deer,
the scorpion-guarded mailbox
he could watch from the armchair,
his only one, storeroom-floor plaid,
the seat rubbed pastel by the daily
wranglers, where i would sit once
at his wake, before granny had it
covered, and the new dark
cushions felt too full too soon]

and the love of his life

[woman of weather, of grizzled
tempests, single mother of three
with a sour tongue that he visited
every day, trading flowers
for contempt until she said yes,
let him settle beside her, filled
fewer rooms with bluster,
knew the oak of his silence
to make purpose, make shade
for her anger, a kernel nursed again
to bloom once she was left behind]

held his hand, Vernon Otto Roessler

[stick-legged youth of Perth Amboy,
boy who bummed his first smoke
from the mailman at age eleven,
boy of brass who loved his trumpet
like a pet, organized illicit
jams at lunch, soaked in big band
and jazz and starlet dreams
until he became husband, father to seven
by either blood or never leaving,
man whose music went cold until
the tie and the shirt were off,
and he could polish and blow and stomp
to the oleander, man of chess,
of tastykakes, of the crushed fruit
of texas sunsets, gambler with a mean
shuffle and endless loose change,
builder of tables and forts and fires,
man of quiet dissent and quieter
disapproval, man who lived and loved,
silhouette and winking ember
on the porch as we’d drive away]

slipped quietly and peacefully 

[a lie for the living, for those who heard
the toothed breaths, the air a butterfly
he could never catch, the slow wings
of smoke heaving him into huffs
as he wrested off each sock, the ribbed
cough, the stained handkerchief
damp in a pocket, the rattling sleep,
yet still the lighter caught and whispered,
still the volcanic sludge of ash
in the pickle lid after a spring rain]

from this earth on Friday, May 6, 2005

[as i lay in the arms of a man
i covet uselessly, who will vanish
this day and call me another from seattle,
who will be a furtive flight west
and a reminder always of the call
i didn’t answer, of my father’s staid tone,
of my mother’s locked door,
of a house where someone will forever
be missed, be missing, be gone]