LAST RIDE (for my cousin Richard Reilly)

LAST RIDE

             In dreams begins responsibility

                —WB Yeats

             for my cousin Richard Reilly

             Dec. 21, 1954 - June 5, 1977

      He loved death more than me

      and so slipped back

      into the bosom of the sea.

The cold rain of memory

cresting each wave of thought—

the half-life of yesterday

approaches the gardens of sleep

takes root, finds the fertile fields

of imagination lonely

for the dream’s embrace.

     They took my new red tricycle

     For his leg, they said; the steel brace,

     a strange, uneasy piston.

I had no reason to face the dawn,

my prince of tides returned to the sea.

My legs ached as I crossed the floor

and though I cried, no fins appeared.

Reality bent itself toward sleep—

     beneath the streetlights’ sodium glare

     patient and unyielding, dark cars

     waiting for the motorcycle’s drone—

Small mermaid, I carried the burden

of that night home to the dream’s final sea.

12/9/93