this isn't about age but the feel of taste,
the swell of the chorale ---obligato
she liked my pirate flag, she was a pirate
too she said, and as it snapped at the mast
we took up the old bike horn and tambourine
and honked a giddy march, laughing at money
said she'd kick my ass in pool, though she didn't play;
she said i was gay, a communist, a gay communist
she asked a customer for our check once,
recalled it as the dumbest thing she'd done
when told she'd done it, her soft laugh
a moisture of stuff boys told her, nuts in love
the distortions of unhappiness! but with Rose no meanness,
sometimes a tendency to romanticize revenge or get dark tattoos;
she liked to close a hand
upon the other hand and crack her knuckles
with a sound like who cares
Rose liked strong coffee to get going and made kava kava to sleep
i always drove (she hated cars)
i nearly hit a squirrel, and a bird, which i did hit, but couldn't tell her,
not the way she yelled and pushed into her seat
enough to put me off women half my age
relying on you to take them places
she wanted Fall of the Damned tattooed down her arm,
but had no way to meet the artist, who would've had trouble with Bosch
Irish Cherokee, wine-dark lips, sorrowing Slovac
when my Rose lies down, opens and smiles and looks
down herself at you she'd say yeah to move the river
around my boat, becoming what you heard for days;
she told me i was hard to know and had a teenager's libido
which i whispered yeah to
we weren't going anywhere, we didn't care,
then I cared and in the mirror watched the bird
try to fly off the road
i'd find her, my lovely Rose, waiting for me on the road
back to her family's farm, in her jeans and jacket,
listening to her sad music on those little earbuds so nobody'd know
she didn't like the crack across my windshield,
why don't you get that fixed she said
then would pull up the soft skirt she sometimes wore
and reach over in traffic, arousing the men in my horse
lying in wait outside the gate, ready for the myths of famous dates