I remember standing at the window
watching the snow fall slowly
through the afternoon.
It was one of those April snows
we used to get in Pittsburgh
before America went to hell.
I’d just returned from spilling
my parents’ ashes in the Llano River
behind their house, probably
an act of thanagogic vandalism
of a municipal water supply
but who’s to know?
And watching the snowflakes
melt as fast as they hit the sidewalk,
I felt a bit ghostalgic, a word
I may have invented
for that occasion to mark
a feeling of nostalgia
for another world, the one
we came from and will return to,
and also the feeling of affection
for the dead, at least for
my mother, a kind and wise
woman who subtly saved me
from my father, a cruel vain man
whom I’ve come to accept
genuinely despised me.
But I didn’t hate or dislike him
instead I disloved him, feeling
an intense disappointment
at his limitations, opportunities
for love being so few in this life.
And as each snowflake fell
on the sidewalk immediately
disappearing as if meant
to live only in the air, of the air,
I was feeling astralgic, a sadness
for the stars that died
billions of years ago
whose light we see now,
a homesickness for a cosmos
that no longer exists.
There is no lasting happiness
in this world, only
particles of happiness,
fleeting, unpredictable,
transitory as a fragrance
or a falling leaf or a glance
from a passerby on the street,
a plain person, hardly noticeable
who slips through our dreams
like a cat through shadows
changing us in ways
we never wanted to be changed.