Movie Magic

Three hours from end of her shift to start of our movie:
Thursday-night preview of Bohemian Rhapsody
I knew I’d love. Anything to do with Queen
took me to childhood & rare feelings of safety music brought.
We had time & didn’t want to sit around
thinking how much we’d love it
because we might not love it as much as we’d like
in that way expectations let you down
when your favorite football/hockey/baseball team loses in the playoffs &
you’re left with no reason to get out of bed tomorrow,
no hope for anything good to happen. So,

we took a drive through Kanawha State Forest
to view leaves which changed color later.
I wanted to see them & wanted her to see them &
wanted to share the seeing of them with her
like a new favorite song from a new favorite band.

We listened to the radio & drove through the woods
for an hour, pointing out favorite swaths of swirls
as psychedelic as notes coming out of my dash.
Left us feeling we drove into a painting by Van Gogh,
hillsides covered with bursts of flamboyant excess
like Freddie in one of his on-stage outfits.
I almost expected the trees to raise a playful fist to us,
calling us Darling in whispers.

I Miss Writing Obituaries

although a quarter-century has passed & I’m closer to mine
than those I typed on an ancient newsroom keyboard.
I miss the love (or lack of) passed along
by family or funeral directors
with awkward facial ticks & charcoal suits.

They’d bring me tins of cookies at Christmas:
red Santas & wreaths glazed in emerald glitter
no staff would eat them unless somebody else went first,
superstition transforming treats into cursed objects
smelling of formaldehyde. I miss the dead, too—

their fraternal organizations, masonic symbols, spouses,
special friends. Even their names misspelled on birth certificates
were subjects of intrigue: John with two h’s,
Amy of the two e’s, Plymale or Plymail, Gold or Golds.
Each life was a formula for mystery. What secrets vanished?

What of the survivors—a mother, two brothers,
two sons, & a daughter? There’s a universe
of those remaining. We can’t know them.
They have their stories, but who will tell them?
Who speaks for lists of those not-yet-but-soon?