Dear Ed Abbey's Corpse

I never met you nor your animated self
nor known beery expeditions of legend
nor known the lusty, wordsmithed snares
that I imagine you set for barmaids
nor heard firsthand the glamorously anarchic rants
that provoked a generation,
but I read the Solitaire book
and even met a good German Shepherd named Abbey
whose upwardly mobile, educated, white liberal owners
loved you. You’d hate them, but Abbey licked rum ice cream from my hand
on a night filled with creosote and rain. You see,
Ed Abbey’s corpse, there’s a dance tonight
in this neighborhood far from the high desert’s cold,
and I’m walking with a fifty-something divorced señora
who sashays through the conga and piano and sax
which have spilled themselves velvet
from the open windows on Columbia Road.
Señora dances like there are hundreds
of Puerto Ricans in the street
ready to welcome us into this imperfect human song,
and who’ll arrive provocatively late to heaven’s door
where I imagine you’ve already shed the blue sleeping bag,
never telling where.


March 2020 Challenge Winner