Who you pretended to be

Who You Pretended To Be

 I only appeared to belong to my mother --Jane Kenyon

I almost died when Ulysses sailed

leaving behind  the dowager queen

complaining of processed sugar as Grandfather's limousine

tooled  to Saks to browse brassieres and under things

and I slept on the jump seat with the engine idling

one of a dozen flights of sheer indulgence

department stores faded into carbon monoxide.

Then a graceful turn with vasoline-- assisted living,

 Brazilian coffee for the lungs,

 cream and a petite convertible.

A beach cabana cost thousands: the canopy's pastel

reminded me of Joseph's coat. Golf clubs battered a canvas green,

" No wider than our lawn," you sniffed. The patients saw vultures

on the oak finials though without husbands. Yours was rattled.

He would bawl: Those bronze bastards slowed their carts

to watch your boobs. They sprayed chalk over the ivy;

they passed. Blackballed, you preferred umbrella shade

to their rank cigars, a vegan diet when blood was thin

a rich waistline that balked at meals

a premium poolside porch screened in.

You collected glass though nobody knew

imagining you had bonds

a diamond ring tucked in the sugar tin.

The Cordoba lobby was a lobby of confusion

 but transcendent as Lorca once wrote

the distant city on the heights.

 Flower bouquets choked a cucumber suit.

There was a halo to the orchid

to the toque no one would dare 

a public appearance in botanical colors a Thanksgiving meal.

You grieved in an Italian scarf  and faintly stale corsage.

To your son who chewed a carrot from a distance,

Take me home. I can't wait to get out of my shoes.