Failed Kiss

The sky turns gray at four o’clock

as the furnace churns in the cellar

and fails to warm the granite foundation,

jack posts and ceiling beams.

The icy floor and the odor of smoke

from the blown-out candle

make this already fading sky

as poignant now after a night as sleepless

as past nights when I listened for my son’s cry

and stumbled to feed him,

as that sky Frieda Lawrence watched turn

gray and fade

from the Villa Robermond in Vence,

in the next room, her dead husband,

the scent on her hand from the ankle she had clasped,

on her lips, a failed kiss,

while his hungry ghost and the maid’s sob

pierced a cold vein in her and scorched it.

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The John and Mim Poems is a portrait of a marriage and Miriam Levine’s gift to you.