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by Keith Abbott
Richard and I were at a seaside outdoor cafe. Everything was painted white, the walls, the sidewalks and the poles holding up a yellow awning over us. He was poor, as if at the very end of his life, cadging drinks and food. After I ordered him some hot dogs, we stood at the lunch counter in the shade by a brilliant green lawn, waiting for a seaman's white mess jacket to be delivered. Richard was going on a cruise, and it was clear from his comments that this cruise was simply a metaphor for his passage through death.
When the mess jacket arrived, Richard put it on and instantly looked like a different, much younger person even though he remained his old self, quarrelsome, vain and proud. He was very sad, too, claiming the coat wasn't right. But once he had undergone the change, he couldn't go back. He began to bicker about the hot dogs — they weren't, he implied, up to his status. There was no way to tell him that he was no longer a famous writer, but a mess orderly.
A young woman came by and took me on the lawn. Once we were in the sun, her skin seemed radiant, supple and beautiful. We stood looking at Richard on a bar stool, dissatisfied, unhappy and fretful. When I made a move to go back to him, the woman brushed a finger ever so lightly on my arm, holding me back easily with a paralyzing, almost magnetic touch. I knew then she was my muse and she had other things for me to do.
Poetry Flash? 193
1989: 17
Reprinted in Kumquat Meringue 1 (April 1991)
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