Almost an Elegy: For Tony Hoagland
Your poems make me want
to write my poems,
which is a kind of plagiarism
of the spirit.
But when your death reminds me
that mine is on its way,
I close the book, clinging
to this tenuous world the way the leaves
outside cling to their tree
just before they turn color and fall.
I need time to read all the poems
you left behind, which pierce
the darkness here at my window
but did nothing to save you.
