for Dana and Mary Gioia

He was your promised land,
the milk and honey of your days,
a shining spangle on adulthood's veil;
he was your sacrifice.

He died before forming a word,
but his primal baby sounds were
a complex language to your ears.
His future has passed.

Mourners cluster in the living room
to admire the few photographs
that keep alive the absent son.
Uneasy, mute as eels,

we drink red wine by the bay window,
watching fog colonize the Hudson's edge.
So many poets assembled and not one
original thought redeems us.

Death comes to others every day,
as banal as a badly-cooked meal.
This child fled the weight of life;
he won't sleep in his bed tonight>.

We all are reaching for paradise,
beyond the widest river, the deepest abyss.
The mourners in your living room, and you,
trapped behind our walls of glass.