Death has little meaning: at eight,
I associate it with pets,
Plants: the still and aquariumed
Hamster, the Easter violets

Wilting in the third grade window:
Franklin School, 1960,
My first beautiful teacher, young,
Brunette, alive, a fantasy

Transfiguring boys who fixate
On her red lips and bosom,
Punning her Poe-like name, Lenore,
Smelling the pungent perfume

She dabs on the nape between bells,
The aroma of recess,
Stirrings of sexuality:
Thinking of her, embarrassed,

I sample testers and buy Mother
The same perfume at Rexall's,
To wear on parent-teacher night
Accompany her down the hall,

My teacher greeting us, saying
He's wonderful, wonderful,
My mother greeting her, saying
I know: Lenore in lambswool,

Crinoline, her figure as full
As the underside of moons
Rising above me, her Avoned
Lips as scintillant as spoons

Laid atop each other: she tells
Our parents that she's engaged,
And because I don't yet know what
The word means, I act my age,

Bursting into the class to play
With my mates while the hour
Passes and the smell permeates
The elements: wildflower:

My only memory, her perfume:
The rest I have imagined,
Pushed out of me, pieced together
Then as it might have happened:

She boards the bus at the corner
By the crossing guard, heading
To Rutherford where she will live,
Where she has planned a wedding:

The bus barrels down Stuyvesant
Avenue out of Lyndhurst
To the intersected Ridge Road
Where Dr. Williams, immersed

In the sorry facts of his life,
Composes mortal poems
In the dim lamplight of his den:
The clock ticks, a metronome

In the moments before the crash,
The bus outside his window
Illuminating his north room
A brighter shade of yellow:

The broadsided hydraulic doors
Unable to open, welded
Shut as the metal shears like foil,
Passengers trapped or propelled

Out of seats to the curb, aflame,
The doctor agape at his desk
Witnessing the spectacle, horror,
The aftermath, the grotesque

Wailing of the dying and dead,
His appearing on the scene,
Perhaps trying to help Lenore
While the leaking gasoline

Ignites on the main boulevard,
Perhaps standing back, knowing
She's already beyond his help,
The inflammable world, blowing

Away like violets out a window:
The bridegroom weds another,
The boys burrow in the perfumed
Lambswool of weeping mothers,

And the sorrier Dr. Williams
Returns to his study alone
To record the causes of death,
Medical and melodic ones:

These, the desolate dark weeks
Of a suburban M.D.
Who saves some people twice: at birth
And middle age, with poetry,

So death still has little meaning:
I associate it with metaphor:
The canonized, the forgotten,
The still sweet scent of Lenore.