At the Algonquin

At the Algonquin
For Pete

I’d buried my mother two months earlier
—as the earth delivered her bounty of bluebells
and daffodils—in the wind-licked graveyard beside

the village church she’d robbed in another lifetime.
You did your best, I wrote on the white-rose wreath,
considering… What more can you ask of a person?

Although, I did ask her (again) as she lay
slender as a snowdrop in her hospital bed,
her white head pendent, if I should have a child.

And there we were at the Algonquin, sipping
sherry like a couple of Round Table aesthetes,
Matilda the cat lounging on her chaise longue in the lobby,

content to ignore us. (She has a nose for poseurs.)
Earlier we’d held hands and threw back our heads
in laughter in a candle-lit carriage house on Barrow Street

—in for a penny, in for a pound.
And there we were riding the elevator
to the Thurber Suite, two Walter Mittys, willing

to yoke our fears and fantasies; go for broke.