c. 2023 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(7-23)
On the 29th day of this month, I pause
In quiet reflection, undeniably lost
Remembering the distant day when friendship failed
And a mystery was born
The old Zenith radio in our back room on North Cayuga Street
Had its vintage vacuum tubes glowing
I had tuned to a station, from Cornell
With light music, and reports
The details made me feel out of sorts
A local man, they said, had slipped into the gorge and out of mortal time
When I heard his name read aloud
My face went numb
The refrain caught me unprepared
I nearly toppled from my folding chair
Mark Lebowitz, in his later 20’s, as I recall
Older than the rest of us
Someone we gifted with admiration and trust
A graduate, a poet, a scholar of the written word
Son of a veterinarian
A hippie contrarian
Once, even on the air
Before coming to our video lair
At Channel 13
He had chosen to end the journey
Though so young and able to inspire
The door closed rudely after he departed
Locked with a skeleton key
And works of brass
I heard it through the loudspeaker cabinet
Clutching my ribs, and covering my mouth
To keep from doubling over with grief
I was only a teenager
Unable to process the turn of events
That sent him leaping over the fence
Into a rocky oblivion, below
July heat revives the hurt
Though softened now, by decades, expired
My friend has long since joined the continuum
Born out of an early death
Ever alive, on the other side
Of a mirror
Distant, so distant
Yet in memory, persistent
I hear his voice still, when dreams let me peer across the divide
And cry
(For my friend Mark, who ended his life on July 29, 1980)
