Bathos

You’ll forgive the expression, I hope
for my various nostalgias of early March:
Children on swing sets and slides,
two people sitting on a park bench
sharing a lunch, park lovers
held together by an invisible parenthesis.
I considered attending church
when I saw the first crocus,
then didn’t, and a great song
rose without me anyway,
like wind on waves,
one voice from many.

Breathing the same air,
you took a sip to taste
my coffee, that sweet
ignorance of living
which now leads to
doubt, and deadly,
and doom, your lips
two surfaced sharks.

Here we are today,
souvenirs stapled to a wall,
benign but mad pennants
facing the mirror of history.

Yes my heart slaps,
urges, flashes, spreads,
plies a blistered speech
without anyone else
listening or hearing.

I am held together by a parenthesis,
that absurd embrace of whispered words.

Here is where I drop in
the anticlimactic lapse
of a question mark.

?

You’ll forgive the expression:
I hope.