The Woman Who Knew All Too Well
(for Joan Valentina)
That her health was now a soldier
astride a battlefield,
too wounded to correspond.
That her body was in a lover’s quarrel
with an impervious 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 ambrosial scent.
And so
this woman who knew all too well
has now left all that knowing behind
with us.
Though my life only brushed hers;
a moth grazing a bulb ablaze with light,
her absence has surreptitiously gnawed a hole
in the fabric of our world.
Aside from my own lackadaisical interest
in the lives of others,
my mind no match
for her uncanny radar,
few could hold a candle
to the breadth
of Joan’s kindled exuberance.
You wouldn’t be wrong to say
Joan knew a thing or two
about everything and everyone,
as if peering room by room through
a spy glass made for
drawing down the stars.
I could see her apartment window from mine
and now and then I’d glance
across and notice her scrolling the internet,
her posture like a question mark,
her lamp casting its theatrical spot
as if she were the sole star
in a now =bare bones production of her life.
So it was that a vacant light caught my eye
having been on night and day for weeks,
with her, uncharacteristically
missing at the controls.
I wondered if she were in hospital
knowing she would know if it were
the other way around.
I suddenly had the uneasy 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 still find ways to stay
on top of any and all goings on.
Nothing could extinguish her desire to know.
Or at least I thought.
Now I wonder,
where has all that knowing gone?
A friend or loved one’s death
tilts the mind’s tender machinery.
It simply does not compute
for someone to be suddenly and irrevocably erased!
Not someone as vivid as Joan!
An habitual problem solver,
her resourcefulness was Emersonian.
All things being in a ceaseless flow of change,
Being the subject of constant metamorphosis.
She prided herself on a dauntless self-sufficiency.
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 pause on any subject
as if from the axis of her
own personal wheel of fortune,
with the inarguable voice
of lived experience.
Nothing was off limits.
The food she cooked.
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 of
finessing every room
she entered.
As I write this on the morning after her passing,
The Queen of Outer Space
is playing on TCM behind me
and an unlikely thought presents itself:
How much world must we
hold inside ourselves
so as not to fade away
when we are gone?
I remember the last story Joan shared with me.
It lasted the length of an entire meal.
A man had come into her life.
A wonderful man full of kindness,
a gentleman wanting to do for her.
Why was he lavishing so much affection on me?
She wondered at a loss aloud.
After all, she was no spring chicken. (Her words)
Didn’t he know every step tired her,
that every breath was a chore.
Joan, I said, why not just let yourself be loved?
After that, our conversation dwindled into
demolishing our decadent desserts.
I’d like to think LOVE had come for Joan,
as late as it was.
Love unplanned for, love unexpected.
Maybe this was the last thing
she longed to know
all too well,
one final thrilling adventure
before moving on;
a Love that eclipsed
the most ravenous of minds.
Then again,
maybe because she once said
I was her favorite poet,
I’m left too dumbfounded
to do her justice
with a single line.
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