Mike Bove: Our Neruda

My mother gave me a book
of Neruda’s poems
with a beautiful inscription
and when I got mad
I tore it out, sold the book
in a yard sale. Christ,
I wish I hadn’t done that.
Not for Neruda
but for her,
for that inscription
as the last part of her,
last evidence
of her influence and care.
Neruda wrote with green
ink as a symbol
of private hope and desire.
Halfway between duty and desire
I lay awake trying to remember
what she wrote, something
about lasting love
and the slow grind of years apart,
something beautiful,
but I’ve said that,
something I’ll never
remember because
I tore out the page,
sold the book
in a yard sale.
And now every day
feels like a torn page,
like my Neruda in a stranger’s hands,
so each morning I write
a new inscription
on my mind’s first page:
always beautiful,
always in green.