Wood Chips And Pine Straw Poem by michael hogan

A pot of pozoli with fragrances from the south
steams on the sideboard.
Samantha has brought loaves of warm wheat bread.
There is chilled wine and cold limonada.

The atelier is filled with watercolors and oils,
incomplete sketches and pots and brushes;
an old smock like a tinted shroud.
We stand on tiles multicolored from paint spills
shyly touch half-formed clay figurines.
A life stopped in the middle not the end.

Gabriel, knowing only music,
picks out on his battered guitar the defiant notes
of an old rebel song: No pasaron.
They shall not pass:
those who do not see significance in here and now,
or have given up on meaning.

This gesture says: she lives in us.
We are the mulch against forgetfulness.
We are wood chips and pine straw of memory.