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But I thought of you, Maddy, so many times,
not even including
when I just found your obituary deep in
the archives of the New York Times, a whole
life reduced to a pdf file, asking
me, please, in lieu off flowers, to contribute to the
National Colitis Foundation,
you the laughing girl who took me, straight-ass high school
senior, down to the Village to hear Bob Dylan, who
got me stoned, first time ever, in the crotch of a
tree in Van Cortlandt Park, how we laughed, who
taught me the language of love-the whole deal, with
no conditional tenses -by the 18th hole, while we hugged and
and watched the Broadway El throw blue-white sparks
into that star-shot hot Bronx night, you the laughing
sad girl, your mother dead, you the lonely girl
whose father was too scared or too hip to
interrupt our love-making one room away, you the
troubled girl with her tale of abortions,
all this during my last summer at home, then off
to college, while you stayed behind, while you died
at twenty-seven, the laughing girl, the
beautiful girl, so alive in memory, the hot summer,
the green grass, the blue-white sparks.
In memory of Maddy, 1947-1974
September 2007