PHILOMENE LONG d. August 2007
Is it possible to imagine a smiling tidal wave bearing flowers and a guitar?
And rushing into a room to give them to you?
Is it possible to imagine Philomene
Who imagined herself so beautifully?
Is it possible to imagine
The love she bore to her husband John
So that his death was only the slightest interruption of their conversations?
Death, pooh!
“I do tend to fill up a room,” she said.
What happens really is that the room suddenly feels cold.
Whatever happened to the sun? it asks. Will it ever return? it asks.
And then it sees Philomene
So it wraps itself around her, curls up at her feet like a kitten, covers her like a cloak
It becomes a MUCH livelier room,
Offers witticisms, flirts with everyone, quotes Rumi (its favorite poet).
Philomene could make a room talk
But she also listened
Is this not the first lesson in compassion?
What waves of intellect come from Philomene when she speaks
What flowers of poetry
What echoes of music as from instruments.
There are no smiling tidal waves bearing flowers and guitars.
Everyone knows that.
But there was Philomene

-Jack Foley

THE GHOSTS OF VENICE WEST
They are already ghosts
John and Philomene
As they pass
Along the Boardwalk
This highway of poetry and death
Where ghosts and poets overlap
As they pass, the gulls
Ghosting above their shadows

Everything’s haunting everything

Already ghosts
John and Philomene
Under the ghostly lamp posts
Of Venice West
Their cadence
The breath of sleep
At rest
Lost at the edge of America
Already ghosts
And each poem
Already a farewell

Everything’s haunting everything
The sea is the ghost of the world

      John Thomas and Philomene Long