Wednesday, March 2, 2011

On Hearing Belatedly of a Friend's Death

for Ruth Weisner

We grab death at awkward moments,
Friends a thousand miles away:
Pictures and old poems in the mail,
A posthumous volume,
Bitter sweet in its delay.

Byron's Grotto, Portovenere,
An Italian Summer,
8 August 1979,
A clipped clear photograph -
You, brown dress, brown skin, demure.

A heap of broken images,
Bits and bits of desultory things:
February 19, 1981,
Your shadow in the morning,
In the evening, the rush of wings.

bkb
used with permission

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