Poetry

Yes, she was a countess, she said,
but being of a mind concise and thrifty
sniffed 'that and a dollar fifty
will get you on the subway---'
A long time ago, clearly.

She rode to harriers
not like a lady, side-saddle,
she claimed, but daringly astraddle,
following the yelping, fanned-out pack
over the hills and back.

Later, she studied Medicine at Trinity
after getting a 'dispensation'
and became a gynecologist-obstetrition.
'Leave from the crown?' I frowned, expectantly.
'No, from the bishop', she replied.

But she never practiced--
first, there was the war; later the AMA
back home dealt her the no-way
so if you didn't ask, she would frankly say
'I spent my life in marine-salvage.'

And she did. Comfortable with card-readers,
as superstitious as pragmatical
once at dinner she told me she'd seen Michael
the Archangel behind a choir stall. I just kept eating.
What he was doing there I didn't ask.

Was she ever married? Surely you'll want to know.
Yes and no being the precise answer.
Yes, to a man who died of colon cancer--
to him she proved a good and prudent wife.
But, no, it was all remedial; the actual love of her life

was a viscount who vanished
during a bombing mission over the continent--
or was it the Pacific? It was him who lent
her life it's strange trajectory--
it's sad 'sic transit Gloria' quality;

She couldn't forget her lost aviator--
wrote, you might say, till she was blue
the world over, for a clue
to his whereabouts. Was he tortured?
Was he ever, mangled, found? Succumb to some

Lonely impulse to leave his life behind,
including among it's jetam her?
She doubted it but never could be sure.
His was the true, the one love of her life--
can one, at heart, be wed to any other?

Each Thursday she served
lunch at the Center to people she called 'old',
some younger than her, if the truth be told,
Age for her being a mere tendency to dependency.
In return she got discount tickets to shows.

A doctor suggested warfarin
for her heart's tribulation
'I appreciate the recommendation--'
she sniffed, 'but I'll take no rats bane,
and what's more intend to outlive you.'

So she compromised wih aspirin,
dying at home, at ninety, years later.
Annoyingly she'd say 'See you later, alligator'
each time we parted, but I understood
how folks get used to the idioms of their times.

She was cremated. At her uptown memorial,
arms crossed on an odd upsurge in the table linen,
I asked her cousin Ellen
'So where's Rose?' 'You're leaning on her,' she replied,
slightly taken back.

And so I was. 'See
you later, alligator,'
I cried, and again, 'see you later'.
'It was nice to know you',
adding, and so, so it was.