One's mate of half a century beneath granite
can choke a heart's whole world with stone.

—Was that put well?
Is it syntactically in keeping with a linear literary evolution
      recognizant of the work of past masters?
Solace for the victims of reportage: So far as we yet know, of all the matter in the universe, only that
      which we call human
            may term an expression of fifty years of immutable love
Banal.

Twenty-three hundred miles away, in the produce section of an A & P, the
      granddaughter speaks, offhandedly but without unconscious irreverence:
"Maybe this summer, when Mom and Dad take Grandma to Wenatchee to visit
      friends and visit Grandpa's grave, they can pick us up
            some Winesaps."

Is this cruel
      or meaningless, this juggling of importances by time, onlookers or generations?
Is this again but the senseless beat of a cattail before wind that hope can
      shift from love to Rome Beauties
That poets can juxtapose yearning for the one with memory of the other
      within vignettes biased
            with the subterranean portent of crime?

Those whose lives are witnessed keep their heads down, saying only
      that things happened as they lived them
That some hearts never cared,
      did once,
Still do.