(Samuel Beckett to Desmond Egan in a Paris Café)  

Winter unfolds in images:
leggings and childhood igloos;
dogs pulling sleds
through neighborhoods
I dare revisit only in memory
as I travel through parallel pasts --
hers and mine;
the years intertwine
like time
in a Faulkner novel.  

The canines look the same,
and if I look farther,
she is in a house dress,
draped in laziness,
feasting on salami on matzo smeared with butter,
and a filter-less Camel chaser.
Then Dewars – “No water please.”
She read away her days.
Hattie cleaned.
Mrs. Sherry typed.
Dark Shadows played forbiddingly in the background.
Childhood I have long repressed.
Days after months after years it was;
it must have been