For Alan II

SOMEWHERE AND A BIT OF EARTH

for alan geller

Somewhere in this city

someone is falling in love

but there’s no one

to write a poem about it

if there was maybe it might become eternal

or lost, who really knows about such things

the mystery in words,

I once knew a poet-painter

who had walked the many streets of NYC,

Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona, and others

taking photos of things he wanted to remember

and yet forgetting a million tiny details,

a canvas hung in his dining room

a bright happy painting of his Parisian girlfriend

and now he is a memory just like her

part of somewhere and a bit of earth,

what has become of that canvas?

an inheritance of an instant for someone,

Somewhere in this city

a woman sits alone waiting

but he, she, or whomever it is

will never come

she’ll dream the hours off

imagining Blake touching her lips

with a song of innocent rebirths

and the sitting on park benches for hours

and hours.