Sometimes, Wandering

Sometimes, wandering before dawn,
curtains drawn against the moon,
I have bumped into you
in the hall leading from my bedroom.
You stand, mostly huddled into the wall
scribbling at your yellow notebook
as though your life was at risk.
I wonder that you never warned me,
or was it so enormous.
that I in jerky male youthfulness never saw?
But Betty, my love, our poetry was crude -
like your death:
you were never Sylvia Plath -
But, when they found you - water-logged, nude -
that gaping hole through your head -
I was lost without tether.
Your parents were embarrassed
and prayed loudly for some poor lost soul.
I was not so bold. Oh I cried; I wept,
but at home, at night alone.
I slept some before and after,
and only sometimes, wandering,
am I totally aware of you at all.
Why have we not let go?
Why do you huddle and scribble
so many nights in my long empty hall?
Do you practice your verse? your rhyme?
Do they let you do that?
Some seldom times, on darker mornings, I hear you call
and try to go to you, but you are immersed,
busy, bent to some task, and ignore me.
Standing near you in the long grey hall
I am almost paternal, full of guilt. I wonder
that we never guessed
that such a fragile existence
must surely end abruptly.
I miss the cadence of a voice.
I miss the silly giggles you never mastered.