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La Vie en Rose

by Dan Kasten

I have lived long enough to look at pictures of you
and turn them into numbers

with you, there was a time when each tomorrow was a day of days
without you, I longed for you like a violin phrase
looking for an oboe to wipe its crying eyes

when I had seen for myself Eliot’s handful of dust
not unlike Millet’s shepherds warming themselves
with their backs to the sun on the last warm day of Autumn

when trust came in guns loaded by uniforms of the same color
while all the pretty girls sang Le Vie en Rose

when the world around me was charred and
wisdom became choosing the words of our fathers instead of a fire escape

when morning’s vision of pig-tailed romances
played out on the sidewalks of White neighborhoods
gave way to Evening friends hiding in plain sight
turning away from me as if I had lost a leg

or a friend

on the day I discovered that no one sang like you anymore and
that war was best fought as a chorus of one in an army of many

I etched in stone the exact day and time that I would sadly
gently and with anonymity give away my only copy of
Le Vie En Rose.

03/11/2012

Posted on 03/12/2012
Copyright © 2024 Dan Kasten

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Elizabeth Jill on 03/16/12 at 01:56 PM

Now -this is the way to write about loss.

Your writing is so honestly presented from the protagonist's shoes that it hurts to read it. That's one reason I love it.

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