15 Years
On a sad anniversary, a poem by a friend. We miss you, Uncle Vinty.
Through Those Colors
for Vinty, dying of AIDS
“Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.”
– Paul Simon
In your world the moon
was a man, its full silver face
sprouting thousands of stars
that tumbled down to you
like great, bright hands
to touch your eyes and fill
your head with music.
Your fingers unfurled to touch
thousands of keys—dreams
you left walking one step
behind—the sounds and colors
of the times you were in love,
you were an animal, you were
lost in someone else’s story. And
the words and notes you held out
like offerings—cupped and bright
in your hands.
Your face is star-dappled
with the reds of the last lights of life,
your finger bones surfacing
in your skin, your eyes deep back
into a head of visions, your voice
burrowing its way up out
of a throat of coughs to emerge
like the single color in a room—
the anchor line, the melody.
And I gather up my words like wildflowers—
trying to say anything but goodbye—
until language fails me and the colors
fall from my hands like the last
breaths of stars that never, never land—the moon
looking down at me with the face of a man,
letting me down into the music of tears—
its arms stretching out, going
straight ahead forever.
Brittney Corrigan
Copyright 1994. All rights reserved.
