I can’t imagine that, stuck
within my shimmer bubble.
Aware and wary, fingering
a huge stack of postcards.

A day without you has me missing
how we laugh so hard we’re afraid
we’ll pee, your precision as you lance
the boils of the body politic, your stories
of convents, canoeing, and Joshua trees.
the art you make out of boathouses
and words entwined in paper, the platinum
your hair became, your conviction
that the world might come round right
if we tell (or yell) truth to power.

Oh, I’d miss the things you do, for sure –
you sign up new voters at the library,
midwife babies into breathing,
knock to turn out the vote,
cuddle premies, give readings
of erotic poetry in red shoes,
share you-tubes of horses
prancing or cats in confusion,
wear paper hats at Christmas,
soak husks for tamales,
teach children to write haiku,
and take the other side to test
the argument.

And what you love – the photos
of homeless vets, abandoned cabins,
and rusted barbed wire, your mother’s
picture of an old woman on a Harley,
your grandmother’s apron, that leather bin
of Monopoly pieces, marbles and dice.

You know so much – from framing
a villanelle to sculpting a nude in clay.
You build a Habitat House and
sail a boat to Mexico. You calm
your child’s fears, when possible.
You even see in visions
where your ashes go.