In Memory of Whitey Bulger
by William Doreski
Raking
wet leaves into heaps
isn’t
like harvesting souls
or
combing the ocean for pearls.
The
air shivers with effort.
The
leaves still hostage to trees
rattle
in dull old colors
painters
abandoned when abstract
expressionism
stripped the land.
You
rake as hard as I do but
with
conviction I can’t muster
except
as a crude memorial.
The
famous gangster I met
decades
ago in a Southie bar
has
died in prison, his corpse
a
mangle of obscene gestures
inflicted
by friends of enemies.
I’m
raking these leaves in memory
of
the beer he bought me, a glass
of
Miller’s on tap. He murdered
eleven
people and subverted
the
FBI with his ghostly charm
and
surefooted gift of gab.
His
small talk was a tombstone
of
the purest Carrara marble.
His
eyes were flakes of mica
iridescent
in the low bar light.
I
rake the leaves so pungently
they
decay right here at my feet.
You
never met him, never saw
half
of Boston cringe in his breath,
big
men dropping their feral gaze,
women
shrinking in the new clothes
they’d
bought in Filene’s Basement.
The
drab October afternoon
falls
on its face and whimpers.
You
sense the change in the air
but
don’t realize how the death
of
one man perfects a scene
for
a moment of abject glory.
I
rake and rake, then wheelbarrow
the
wrack to compost heaps
at
the edge of the woods where
tonight
a bear will tumble forth
with
playful appetite raving.
No comments:
Post a Comment