Are there windmills to tilt where you are?
Here, it all feels like a model not quite to scale
this world, a negative space left by the outline of your absence.
This poem is too concrete to be a proper dedication:
it sinks like a murdered corpse in the river.
I would sink too, but it feels like bad form,
like a machine falling into disuse in the age of plastics.
You were never fond of my rages, the dragons taunting me
but you stood there nonetheless.
There is a heaviness in the shape left by your feet.
I am here and cannot follow.
– for Hermano Jones
Tag Archives: death
Autumn 2023, no. 12
The storm last night is tied in my memory to imminent death.
This heat, the day after, is a waiting.
My deathbed waiting is this great wound of the world
and I am ill-prepared to bribe the tug captain
that will bear home
the spirit of my friend.
Lines for a Friend in Hospice
On my honor, always rude in the face of death.
Years of mourning taught
the necessary uselessness of tears.
O Great Blue Heron, tell what news today
from the wild cosmic salmon?
Inform them
we are slowly becoming great leatherback turtles
but that we have not given up
on the possibility of wings.
(for Dave J.)