“Twenty-Nine”

c. 2023 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(7-23)

 

On the 29^th 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)