The Rain on Van Buren Street
David St. John
They’d scraped their years down to the spiritual
Bone in the second floor flat of an old Victorian
They’d made elegant by their desires a place on
That hill above the creek a house where her favorite
Painter had once lived it pleased them living there
Their few antiques lighting the tall windows at night
Walking down their curving drive to Van Buren
After our late dinner I’d stop at the road not quite
Ready to disappear back to my side of town
Where I’d lived that summer in a perpetual
Abstraction of absence displacement & disdain
I’d glance up one last time to see them framed still
In a light beyond their never-drawn curtains
Arguing over money opiates the rain & last remains
(Iowa City, 1973)