For Earl

(murdered in Superior, WI, July, 1984)

You were always repeating yourself.

In March, in naïve spring,

when trees start to shake snow from their limbs,

you met a man you liked

and took him home.

Morning sunlight hurt you.

Walls and sheets once white as snow

were stained crimson,

and bloody tears dripped from your eyes.

I took a single cut rose to you,

red as blood, with petals

wounded by the wind.

And now in summer I have no flowers.

The petals from that one rose

have dropped to the ground and dried, like clotted blood.

What man did you meet this time,

who took you to the railroad yard

(Hobo Jungle, the paper said);

who left you there, sleeping alone,

to be discovered in the morning,

sun afire on your scarred eyelids.

The train will pass, Earl,

tomorrow morning the train will pass

again the matted grass

where you laid down

with your last lover.