Poetry
In my new room upstairs,
you can hear the poets mingle:
parties, indiscretions, confessions,
comforting & terrifying each other.
I’m proud to say I finally
put my poetry books away,
dusted, sorted, alphabetized,
before shelving on the lemon scented oak.
I carried stacks of them up the steps
Addonizio, Ai, Angelou,
their spines pressed together,
sisters of truth, sleeves touching,
Constantine next to Corbett –
for sure they’d have been friends.
Corbett gone too soon, before
I could tell him thank you.
Duhamel next to Dunn, what a perfect match,
Duhamel who learned from Lux, Lux
who takes up an entire shelf,
I placed his books oh so gently,
volume by volume, line by line, each word
a breath he’ll no longer take.
I thank all the birdbaths in the world
for the miracle of him.
Kurt Brown wrote
“All poems say one thing: death is coming.”
Up here in my Poetry Palace death
has never felt so alive.
