in medias res

Maybe this should go in the middle,

your little attempt at a beginning

might fare better there

instead of here where people,

those reading creatures, will ask

what that feature of the thing,

an odd thing to begin with, leads to,

what it will do with the rest;

it would have been best to begin

with something less obtrusive—

a random thought, a jumping lizard,

your lust for someone, a thumping heart—

something that just flares up

and does not demand to be seen again.



The slightest attempt to make a start

takes much from the heart, from there

the heart must weave like a steady weaver,

from there comes the fever of meaning,

as from the end of things; the middle,

though, the time of tragedy and comedy

would have been the perfect place

for your lines, that space where things happen

and keep happening, beginningless, endless,

that space where there are turning points

abundant, happening in moments

like doorways, passageways thrown to us

where memory and anticipation always spin

their wide net and cast it to the sky.





Maybe this should go in the middle,

she held the portrait of her parents,

youthful, making a start of things

with gusto, the portrait screaming

the absence of a child between them.

I think it has more meaning since

the one on the left, she smiled

with a smile lost in the past,

is of my dad before mom died,

while the one on the right, she winced,

is of dad without mom, rocking

on the porch of the Florida farmhouse.

We stood looking at the wall, at each other

for a long time trying to receive sense.





Finally we placed it there, in the middle,

and observed the pictured progression

from commencement to rocking finishing.

We kept looking even through conversation

touching other things, touching the newest

children, touching on the celebration we had

for the last, our girl born with brown curls,

touching on the devastation of everyone

dying at once, of death giving us no time,

touching on the time we took a winding drive

across the States to California, of how easy

the drive was because we had one another.

We finally decided the portrait was well placed,

we faced one another with shining eyes

for a moment. As the sun rose, we slept.