Coming down in Ohio

1.M. Bill Matthews

My uniform hung Air Force blue, way uncool,

when first we met, but Italian silks fit you

sleek as a summer shower. Tall and thin,

Gauloises, Yale swagger, you were the rule

exceptions were made to break. Years unkind

to say the least wiped out that grin I still see

when you lounged like Rimbaud, poet maudit.

Blonde coeds drooled and took notes.

You quoted Horace, charmed us, sipped chablis

like a gospel, cooed over Monk, bloomed in smoke

killing Hugo and Wright, lungs flagged black.

Thirty-some, you sagged by noon, the slack

red set of your eyes, stride gimpy, stiff-

that was exactly what you lived to enact,

a boy-poet, rich as Dickens, keelhauled by life.

The more you aged, the more booze, pills, crunch

of poets got you. No jazz played too much

or kept the night-fears off. You loved one

woman for looks, one art, one touch

as cool as grace you envied, and easily took on,

in praising fingers of NBA centers or of pianists.

You ranked these only lower than trumpets.

You played some yourself, slow forward

I recall, and argued game as well as any theorist.

Watch his elbows, Plumly groaned. I'd been warned,

and still you swiped my ball and nicked my face

enough to let me know the penalty of place

applied anywhere we played with lines

exactly. The last time I saw you you laced

Then you died. I took it hard, as if you were youth

my friends and I expected to meet, a half-tune

half-heard, like being sealed in a heart-beat

that dribbles, surges, leaves you stooped.

Memory plays hard when we turn rank as meat.

Maybe that's why I can't read unguarded elegies

where, almost, you walk on water. Silly.

I'm in a photo with you gone in for a lay-up.

Your hand's near the rim; beneath your feet

there's only air, asphalt, and nothing to disrupt

what looks, given this angle, perfect and casual.

Just the way you liked things. Dusk, marginal

as a zone, holds the rest of us stunned.

See, our mouths are open as if we sing choral

tributes as you rise, sexy star, razor-quick, alone.

Understanding how hurt scores, you liked to clown.

Here you grin, float, beating the clock's shout

you're out of time! The photo's pale,

but your look's locked on the ball as down

your body comes among us, who cry foul, most foul.