Have the seas of streets run together to form one memory of a town I left years ago?
Have the memories of gravestones covered in weeds filled my eyes with tears at their sight?
Do the sight of roses wilted and dying turn my head even now?

I cannot see the forest through the fog of words and memories —
See through visions of towns sped past and stayed in, sleepy hardwood inns with pink curtains which billow as the trucks pass.
Cannot forget the smell of chrysanthemum and lilac —
               their smell haunts me like dissonant jazz,
               but speaks to me no more than the phone, dead, laying at my feet.

This end-of-century is no end of time.
All decades of sight and speech have come together like fingers of lovers, hands entwined.
All decades will remain whole in the deepness of eyes which have gazed deep into southern fountains and the starry sky of past-midnight.

I will wear my trousers rolled as I walk through our old gardens.
I have yet to plant new flowers nor do I care to.
The weeds have not yet taken root, but the grass has grown high along the wooden fence outside.
Perhaps I’ll use paint, whitewash the boards, replace knotholed and splintered boards.
Or perhaps I will simply watch the grass grow.
Stick a reed in my mouth and hum some long-forgotten tune spun from the pink-nailed fingers of jazz and gin in San Francisco years before this day’s nightfall.

I rise to speak,
but sit down again.