For James Liddy 1934-2008
Soft-sunned early November’s comminglings:
loud-leaf fall, poems’ bonfires, All
Saints Day, All Souls Day, cold
air prayer days. Along
the lake snow fences suddenly appear.
(How hard it is to throw ourselves away.
The young want to own the dead,
but the dead are finally big enough
for everyone. Small immortality.)
Grey cloud carnations. What is
the etiquette when a poet dies? Read,
read “Poetry as Arson,” “They’re
all ‘were’ now.” “I say,
it’s what we should be when we disappear,
a sweetness a rich current.” James,
no more pork chops at Pandel’s,
pilgrimages to Blackhawk Island,
grasshoppers (her drink) at Club 26,
or winterlit dinners in the Third Ward
and drinks on Park
under the floodlight of Spicer’s letter.
Was there a more lively talker?
Where? Whom to gossip with now?
Star and its star
in the sky to Wexford
patient bruised horizon.
In Restless Migratory Klezmer Winds
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