Fifth Wheel Legacy Poem by Roger Gerald Hicks

Even after a quarter century the fading image
of heron my stoop flusters me.My wife had
deserted with our children. Struggling to launch a new me,
aching for answers, for new dreams; an anamnesis,
this feral blond- mouth meandering over her face-
materializes at my door.

"Ralph's been killed." She intones the words
like distant
tolling bells."Train. Truck exploded.No
portrait. Found a snapshot negative.Maybe-
Can you make it big...for the funeral? " As I hug
her shuddering body, my finger tips inhale the
scent of her hair. Our first embrace- all our
past affair never more than innuendo. Or so I
had assumed.

I rock the developer tray until all the image
is teased from the photo paper, and the tiny negative
grudgingly yields
a suitable eight-by-ten. Ralph's red-illuminated
features furnish meager personality clues. Small
stature, stocky, cocky, homely. All I'll glean, 'til
his son doubles in age.

Our lives, the photographer, the blond re-join
like roots
of opposing trees entwining under a murmuring
rivulet.I'm introduced as "an old friend."

Tough, but accidents happen, I overhear. She's
set. Insurance will choke the mortgage. Kids
won't want.

But months on months, hair tightly braided &
pinned, pale lips in tattered jeans, she grieves -
like the Mojave pines for vegetation. Sits dark
hours, Ralph's blue-black magnum at hand, dull
eyes piercing the wall.

Ever apprehensive, I
clown. She snorts - occasionally - but never
relaxes in my embrace; feeds, but never
kisses me.

I just can't believe, she mutters one late
evening, barely audible over the low moan of
FM country,
he really went and did it.