the perseids fall.
the weather breaks,
sharp heat turning to sudden wind
and sometime rain.
i stand at the kitchen sink,
scrubbing what remains of your life.
a photo of the most beautiful work
your hands ever made.
the thing itself long since rotted
by mountain rains and sometime sun.
a license plate with your radio call sign,
the name you kept even after moving
to a place ham radio could not reach;
the plate you kept long after
you stopped driving.
eleven years of cigarette
smoke and winter gloom
scrubbed off the glass.
sent down the drain.
i cannot love only
the beautiful, only the proud, only
the moments of shining redemption.
i can only love you whole.
i wrap myself in the last coat
that comforted you in life,
curl up in the brief, welcome coolness
of a rainy desert night,
and miss,
without complexity,
your voice.