Before Lady Died

•

Mineola, Long Island 1958

Lady Day—
a small town nightclub—
and we forgot the ruined voice,
the ruined life when
we saw her coming toward us,
her breath in clouds
a little dog ,
yellow as her eyes,
at the end of a leash.
Awed, we stopped to talk
but she looked at us
with eyes foggy as the night
as though not sure
where she was.

Inside, we sat
at a small table
surrounding a winecooler
filled with melting ice
and a bottle of cheap champagne.
The almost empty room went dark
except for a baby spot-
and there she was,
Our Lady of the Sorrows,
Lady of Perpetual Drunkenness,
of Smack,
of Greedy Men,
who meant her no good,
Lady of the smashed voice,
pulled tense as a wire.
What comes out is what I felt
she once said,
A ghost of that old phrasing,
beauty that bloomed
like the gardenia in her hair
was preserved like a fossil within
the coarsened features
the hoarse voice
now stricken and bare
like black bodies
twisting around the limbs
of a cottonwood tree.