Lilly

    by Ed Bennett

You loved me like a catechist

Leading a seeker to enlightenment,

Shed your vestment before me,

Slowed me, controlled me, led me

With a kiss and knowing look

When my face betrayed

Your blessing of this shared grace.

And more from you over years,

Learning the meaning of you

In every other woman touched

From need or lust or gratitude;

You refused to be a memory

With a card on every birthday,

The brief missive always wishing well.

Lilly, you carried friendship

On the palanquin of your body,

With comfort for my every loss:

Family, a job, a dream’s dissolution.

You moved effortlessly, teacher to lover,

From quiet confidant to final years

To this never mentioned day.

Your family conferred their wishes

With flowers and brass trim

Though you wished a pagan’s pyre,

Were thoughtful enough to invite

The young man you mentored

Wearing middle age like a euphemism

(Unless I live to be one hundred ten).

No one knew how the fire of your flesh

Impressed its meaning into

Decades of quiet words and looks

From eyes that gauged a soul.

Goodbye, my love. Wait for me

Where you are forever blessed in youth,

Where, finally, I will be old enough.

© 2009 Ed Bennett

Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas. Originally from New York City, his work has appeared in the Manhattan Quarterly, and The Patterson Literary Review where he was a finalist for the 1997 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. His most recent work appears in New Verse News, The Externalist, VIMMAG , Touch: The Journal of Healing, and the spring 2009 edition of Philadelphia Poets.