the perseids fall.

the weather breaks,

sharp heat turning to sudden wind

and sometime rain.

i stand at the kitchen sink,

scrubbing what remains of your life.

a photo of the most beautiful work

your hands ever made.

the thing itself long since rotted

by mountain rains and sometime sun.

a license plate with your radio call sign,

the name you kept even after moving

to a place ham radio could not reach;

the plate you kept long after

you stopped driving.

eleven years of cigarette

smoke and winter gloom

scrubbed off the glass.

sent down the drain.

i cannot love only

the beautiful, only the proud, only

the moments of shining redemption.

i can only love you whole.

i wrap myself in the last coat

that comforted you in life,

curl up in the brief, welcome coolness

of a rainy desert night,

and miss,

without complexity,

your voice.