Wichita Triptych

Sometimes the rain shines

Just when the sun reigns,

And that was the way it is

Beyond those French doors

That late afternoon here

In this mind’s early evening

Where they still fade in

That cool color Polaroid,

Pastel shades of her prom dress,

A bowl of double peonies,

Promising, precocious,

Trying, trying to open.

                          •

Their friend and he were tight

Tight-rope walkers, self-taught

Taut-trope-talkers, stalking

Jamb-up, arm-in-arm

And caroling to lucky stars

Their bars and rebars,

The night a carousel

Of tryst and troth,

Of casual carousals,

Cocky arousals,

Pitching the dark to the dark.

(Streetlight and moth,

Reader, she married both.)

                          •

But then there he was,

In the morning’s mourning,

Soi-disant

Proustian mignon,

Aesthetic ascetic

And Kansas rube

Reducing his thought

To a bouillon cube

That no one hot

Ought ever pore over.