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A Letter to Ann Enriquez who Died 12 December 2002 Dear Ann, It's the Sunday night three days after you died. I cooked some chicken legs on the grill. Lee stir-fried zucchini and peppers and onions. She picked fresh lettuce from her winter garden. She dressed it with vinegar and oil. It was all very delicious. As we ate and drank wine, we watched a movie. Al Pacino and Robin Williams--a weird thriller called Insomnia. Robin Williams, who used to be goofy Mork in "Mork and Mindy," was a psychopathic killer in Alaska. He had killed a high school girl. Al Pacino was the cop chasing him. A normal sort of Sunday in El Paso, huh, full of American confusion. I kept remembering you inside your body. Little glimpses here and there. Like running into an old friend at Albertson's. The aisle where they stock the sandwich spreads and the jellies. I'm supposed to pick up the natural peanut butter, one or two other things. Gaspar is not with you because he's still alive. You are gray and tired. You tell me the cancer has finally asked you into the other room. I apologize for not visiting. "It's okay," you tell me. We talk some more. I confide that I am drinking too much. Every night two martinis and some wine. Very quietly I murmur, "The Buddhism isn't working." You giggle, raising your eyebrows, and say, "You have it all wrong, Bobby-- Buddhism isn't supposed to work." You kiss me on the cheek to say goodbye. Your lips are cold. People shove themselves between us. And you are gone. I'm left alone, sad and empty. I should have had a gift for you to take on your journey. A flower perhaps. A Mexican woman had been outside the store standing in the cold and selling beautiful gardenias she had smuggled across the river. Two dollars each and the gardenias smelled so sweet. I should have bought you a Mexican gardenia. Oh well. I proceed to checkout. $27.85 worth of life's wheel. After a few weeks we'll give Gaspar a call. Invite him over for lunch. We'll cry with him about you, Ann. We'll talk about your little town of San Elizario, your house with its 200-year-old adobes. Your absence will be an embarrassment. A ghost of emptiness. Gaspar will want to explain, but there's nothing to explain. You're dead. He will grieve, for how long I don't know. Everybody's different. After a while somebody will change the subject. Then we can forget ourselves with talk about art and poetry, about how books are made, about the weather and the plants. Just the way life is, huh? Nothing special. Love, Bobby |
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Issue #31, February, 2003 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.