In Memory Of January 23,1998 Poem by Whit Leyenberger

Edward J. Mischke IV died on a Friday morning
He had thirty two birthdays to 12 parties, a telling ratio
Edward never lived in another home except his parents’ on Hemlock Hill.
But on the day that Edward died his neighborhood
was filled with unfamiliar faces.

I used to bring him Pall Malls and ask him if he wasn’t lonely
He’d say, kiddo we’re all disappointment merchants,
quit bartering for newer bridges.

Edward had made no attempt to advance the fields of art or science,
He was nobody’s father or brother, and with his parents a decade buried,
he was the survivor. He won’t be remembered most for a love of animals
or for an anecdote about smuggling banned books into the public library.
Mostly, his days were spent on the top of Hemlock hill,
sitting in an aluminum lawn chair surrounded by domestic bottles
and looking down to Greenville.

On the day that Edward died an immigrant raised the flag at the local high school.
And Louis Howard played his son’s favorite song as the vans arrived to repossess
his lifestyle. Down at the clinic Dr. Chu mused on the species of silence, slowly unwrapping another sterilized escape,
while Tommy and Carol plotted courses for their holy land.

On the day that Edward died civility moved another street further
from the Patterson’s. And out behind St. Anthony’s Mary White
and Father Doug fell unrectifiably in love. She thought his hands
felt like the ocean, and her breath could dance on his face like an angel’s pinhead.
Their whispers were bayonets as they wound themselves up for destruction.

On the day that Edward died Walt Kelly lowered the price of artichoke hearts.
Mr. Mitchell’s wife read ten tips to patch a sunken ship and submerged herself in the tide of empty bottles. Jane Reilly lay feeling her hair begin to freeze
waiting to be lifted from the powder underneath. Because if there was one thing
Jane could never endure it was crippling snow angels with her feet.

Edward died of a lingering dependency on absurdity, unable to metabolize
the unmiraculous. He was never the believer, but he was better at being than me.
Edward felt his vicarious pulse across twenty square blocks of American heaven
from the neon frescoes lighting up wet parking lots down to the kids counting
cracks on the frozen lake. There were never eyes that could open like his.
I asked him once what he saw while he gazed downhill.
he replied with his once a year smile, kid there’s a river slowly erasing this place
and everyone’s pretending not to be wet.