-Territorial / 1971

I worked with John Williston in Michigan

running certain documents to specific places

from the start of the day to its end. And then

from the distance of nowhere, his young wife

died at the hands of a quick, fatal illness.

The last time I saw her she was on display,––

her silent, lidded face as celestial as the outer planets.

I'm drawn to travel there, to snoop around,

maybe get a sense of the raw materials

before I wander back to the living.

John Williston's young wife is new to death.

Exotic, frigid fluids fill her arteries.

Intrusive cements petrify her muscle.

The examination laid before John is to see her

as she was in the time when she occupied her life,

when the warmth within her ignited her living breasts,

watered her eyes and her mouth which lulled him

to a trance by the simple nature of a glance.

Now John Williston's young wife

is laid-out before him exposing herself

as the contradiction to everything he knows, and this

was stored in my brain to be retrieved in the here and now,

born from within a crowded funeral home in Ypsilanti.