The Woman Who Knew All Too Well

(for Joan Valentina)

 

i

That her health was a soldier

too wounded to correspond.

That her body was in a lover’s quarrel

with an inopportune world.

That the simple act of walking

was to drag an anchor

across unforgiving ground.

That each breath she took

was a flower devoid of

its heavenly scent.

 

And so

this woman who knew all too well

has passed away.

 

ii

Though my life only brushed hers

like a moth grazing a bulb ablaze with light,

her absence has gnawed a hole

in the fabric of the world.

Aside from my lackadaisical interest

in the lives of others

I was no match for her uncanny radar,

nor could my faintly fractured mind

hold a candle to the bated breadth

of her insatiable curiosity.

I could only stand back and marvel

at her clever knack for discernment.

 

I would not be wrong to say

she knew a thing or two

about everything and everyone,

peering room by room through

a spy glass made for drawing down the stars.

 

I could see her apartment window from mine

and every now and then I’d glance

across and notice her scrolling the internet

in a lonely pool of light, her lamp

casting a theatrical spot

as if she were the sole star

in a bare bones production of her life.

That vacant light had caught my eye

as it had been on night and day

for weeks with her missing at the controls.

 

I wondered if she might be in hospital

knowing she would know if it were

the other way around.

I suddenly had the unsettling feeling

I might never see her again.

 

Though she was never

one to withdraw from the world,

her Lupis had lately gotten the best of her.

Even so, she would find ways to stay

on top of goings on,

even if by more subversive means.

Nothing could stop her desire to know.

 

Now I wonder,

where has all that knowing gone?

 

iii

Another’s death tilts the mind’s

tender machinery.

It simply does not compute

to be suddenly and irreversibly erased!

For the habitual problem solver,

resourcefulness is the highest religion.

 

It’s true I once described her as

tilting every room she entered

so that all roads led to her.

At a party, she’d speak

without a pause on any subject

as if from the axis of her

own personal wheel of fortune

with the inarguable voice

of lived experience.

The food she prepared.

The parts she played.

The clothes she wore.

The people she helped.

The stories she shared.

The problems she solved.

The paths she took.

 

Nothing escaped

her powers of observation.

She, the mystery solver.

She, the truth decoder.

She, the gossip monger.

She, the storyteller.

She, the advice provider.

She, the mentor

for finessing every room.

 

As I write this the morning after,

The Queen of Outer Space

is playing on TCM

and an unlikely thought presents itself:

How much world must we

hold inside ourselves

so as not to fade

when we are gone?

 

Maybe because she once said

I was her favorite poet,

I am left too numb

to do her justice

with a single line.

 

 

11/21/23