3012. SEMBLANCE OF THE REAL

SEMBLANCE OF THE REAL
(still-life to vendors to vegetables)
I remembered right then what it was I had
said to you : your cigarette ash like an artist's
brush dangling so low over the coffee, I had
looked you over and uttered 'God! You have
such a semblance of the real!' Startled, you
laughed and then gagged, right then almost
coughing yourself to death. Then we got
over that and finally embraced.
-
It was a November moon, Judy, way back
then and long before you'd changed your
name. Tenenbaum to Rifka to, Jesus, Smith!
I could never believe you were there, in
any of them : pallet-faced artist-hounded,
always running forager that you were.
Success, as I saw it, should always
elude the best of us. And then, just
like that, it hit you. There was more.
-
Some other guy, named Reed, draft-evasion,
prison time, wasn't it all of that? I still forget
and it really doesn't matter. Now, I'm looking
at your painted flowers on some broken down
matte of a wall. The piece itself still looks good
enough, but I can't recall it at all. I remember
something else instead : our bicycles, and
how you were always stealing the vendors'
vegetables along the way as we passed.
Funny how these things stay
planted in the mind.