Poem Pair

[It's been a while since I wrote a poem - I wrote a few in my graduate class today and it felt really good because that class had started to become something of a pedant's game this late in the semester...]

A Figure on the Heights

She touched the mountain air
with why, with how, unknown
feelings in her veins. We wished
we could understand her beauty
but it does not know how
to show itself. Music played
like always it does, like it
does always, like it always
does, and there she was granted
a wish: that no body would ever
feel disease again, that breathing
would ease, that night's magic
would grow serpentine through
the streets until it extended
thru the day, bright lit.

Granpa

Forlorn old man ached on the couch
(he did not know what to do)
his poppers burned, his girdle feened,
life ebbed, so and so, with each cough
something was lost by him (he
lost something) and the gramophone
played an old jazz tune
from the 1930s or 40s, remade
by a guy and his band in the 80s.
That's how things went down.
Quieta non movere, we whispered
at the dusk of the day
when the cigarette had burned out
and the reruns ended and we hauled
him to the bedroom, to sleep.