for Christopher Benfey
I. Karl Spitzweg
as the nearest
other mind
around the house
now begins
to lose what’s
left of hers
and disappears
from the rooms
of common memory
once reserved
to speak of things
as if they were
as the roof
still holds firm
against the rain
but not against
the leak of loss
from her brain
like the Arme Poet
in the kitsch
Karl Spitzweg print
here I sit
in my garret
umbrella opened
against the ceiling drip
quill between my teeth
counting syllables
on my fingers
loose leaves leaning
against my knees
ink bottle to my left side
propped up by a bible
about to tip and spill
further rhymes
down the drain
of other minds
II. The Consolations of Philosophy
In Stanley Cavell’s
skeptic surmise
I cannot know
or believe
your other mind
the compromise?
acknowledgment of
or astonishment at
the fact that
no matter how badly
things go with
other minds
if I stay near
and next to them
long enough
they might just
turn out well
behind my back
some other time
III. Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)
My father, aetat. 95,
at the local Walmart,
flirting with the cute Castle Rock
Colo. highschool checkout girl
(big blue-eyed smile,
Eric von Stroheim speaking):
“Look at me,
I’m a hundert und tventy fife years old
und still haff all my teeth.”
Bless you Vaterlein,
who ended up
a year later
at the old soldiers’ home
down in Florence,
across from the Supermax,
no longer recognizing
your son or wife
but impressing all
the nursing staff
with how you could still
so elegantly dance
all the old-world waltzes,
fox trots and forgotten
Charlestons where
in grasshopperese
you’d quickly scape
your hands
crosswise
on your bony
flapper
war-torn knees
drafted out of high school
in Germany
in early nineteen eighteen
and into the U.S. Army
in late thirty nine
(other times, other minds)
retired with V.A. benefits
in mid fifty nine
and buried
(“cause of death: dementia”)
in Fort Logan cemetery
near Littleton,
two years
before Columbine.