20-years without Phyllis

All of the best days of my life
have been lived in a hazy ache
of pain and loss. This is me:

St. Patrick’s day, 1988
by a bright new hospital bed holding
my grandfather’s cold left hand

as he sobs from his shoes.
my right arm aches under his
weight. we wait for her next breath.

her deep brown doe-eyes,
dead, search for heaven.
While we stand by her

in hell. the droning beep
of impending loss was the hymn
to Satan in that antiseptic room.

St. Patrick’s day, 1989
I stand alone in the bathroom
at work crying for the last time

as I think of her painted finger nails
her steel gray hair, and the scent of
the tobacco smoke in her sweater.

at home, alone, my mother
lays in bed all day. (Then everyday
for weeks.) crying "Mother. Mother. Mother."

St. Patrick’s Day, 2003
Sadam has 48 hours to leave, like her
I think. It is a sad world.

With friends, I drive
to Boston for a beer.
We are laughing.

My sister speaks perfect drunk
to a happy old horse on Broad Street.
I think, It is a sad world.

We laugh for hours, as my brother
fumbles and slurs on the gortex jacket
he received for Christmas.

For dinner, I have corned bread
and corned beef and corny
jokes. I laugh for the first time

in 14 years. Until I get home
and look in the mirror. It is me
still. I piss the beer out

and go to bed. I do not cry.
In Miami, my mother lays in bed
all day crying, "Mother. Mother. Mother."

St. Patrick’s Day, 2008
the sky is 20-year-old cloudless blue
like my melancholy.

It is 24 fahrenheit degrees,
I notice the mercury hasn’t budged
in these two decades either.

I think of the smell of cut flowers,
an endless line of cars. of people. of tears.
the cold jokes of the grieving in a funeral home.

Oh yes, there is always Fun in a funeral.
She is still dead. I am still dead.
Tonight, I will have corned beef.

In Maryland, the air is warmer, but
my mother lays in bed crying, all day
"Mother, Mother, Mother."

In the mirror, in the bathroom,
in my heart, in her grave
this is me. St. Patrick’s Day.