For Berryman
He would tell you the grass this spring was a pale
imitation of the deep lushness of the year gone by.
He would say the notes from the reed of Charlie Parker
stirred him to a longing no longer soluble,
a kind of dampness leaving him for days at a time,
inconsolable. Although he would not be remembered
as a brave man, those who knew him well would say
what he lived at the end was akin to bravura lament.
Of the constellations that summer he would locate
only the brightly conspicuous stars of Ursa Major,
his head back, his eyes vacant but focused light years
down that starry road, his grizzled mouth slack
and mindless, like a turkey’s in a downpour swiveled up,
drowning while showered by the fluid blow of keen insight.
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