Free Fall 
(for Jimmy Smith, L.A. Blues Artist/Poet)

You play your last dance
so beautifully it feels like tides
breaking. I hear your blues
inside veins where blood sings
and birds waken with crystal eyes.
My tears flow where you will find
them in our handshake. Crickets
vibrate with your touch.

I take you with me now as memory
and ambrosia for my journey to mountains.
I will share your victory with eagles
who soar poppies into gentleness at dawn.
You free fall off edges and give parachutes
to your promises and chances. Yesterday
is not a number and you steal stone visages
each time you become. The last dance
is just your beginning.

© 1999 Heather Long

It Comes to This

A woman flicks a hip in a Ramada Inn
and you take her nipples in your teeth.
Next thing I know, you're sending letters
from Belize, extolling life on the beach,
the wing span of Cecropia moths,
dunes as tropical architecture, and our kids
can't sleep because they're convinced
you're locked in the garage inventing
something with fluorescent skin.

Three months later, a telegram arrives
from someone named Cassandra, reporting
you're laid up with the runs in Cuernavaca --
asks me to send a case of Kaopectate,
your camo-shorts, and the muscle shirt (under
the router in the garage) with the Morigan's
Uterus Tour silk-screened on the front.  I send
the bill for our son's retainer, a roll of one-ply,
and bra-less, wear the shirt to your company picnic.

It comes to this:  I'm left answers
that have no questions, your broken lava lamp,
and an inexplicable desire to teach
my hips to speak Spanish.

© 2001  Heather Long