Gone

Everybody loved Chick Lorimer in our town.

Far off

Everybody loved her.

So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold

On a dream she wants.

Nobody knows now where Chick Lorimer went.

Nobody knows why she packed her trunk: a few old things

And is gone....

Gone with her little chin

Thrust ahead of her

And her soft hair blowing careless

From under a wide hat,

Dancer, singer, a laughing passionate lover.

Were there ten men or a hundred hunting Chick?

Were there five men or fifty with aching hearts?

Everybody loved Chick Lorimer.

Nobody knows where she’s gone.

I dreamed one man stood against a thousand,

One man damned as a wrongheaded fool.

One year and another he walked the streets,

And a thousand shrugs and hoots

Met him in the shoulders and mouths he passed.

He died alone

And only the undertaker came to his funeral.

Flowers grow over his grave anod in the wind,

And over the graves of the thousand, too,

The flowers grow anod in the wind.

Flowers and the wind,

Flowers anod over the graves of the dead,

Petals of red, leaves of yellow, streaks of white,

Masses of purple sagging ...

I love you and your great way of forgetting.