Lately, I’ve been thinking about my good friend Jerry, who died on December 13 five years ago. While revising my new collection of poetry, How Time Moves, for publication, I’m struck by how many poems I wrote about this dear friend, but then again, every time I drive down Massachusetts Street, past the apartment where he used to live, my heart still looks for his orange car. Here is one of the poems I’ve written about him.
Where Have You Gone?
For Jerry
Where have you gone, my little friend,
quiet in the corner of the couch, or standing
to hold me, your heart beating through mine?
Where are you hidden or hiding just now, four months afterwards, three years later?
Are you closer or further or nowhere at all?
Is your absence a chickadee feather
in the paper litter of leaves or a raindrop
dissolving the gravel of the driveway?
Is the weather pleasant, the company entertaining,
the music a polka or waltz played on accordion?
Are you happy and out of pain?
Do you miss us, or is your mind more
like the space framed between cedar spires?
Can you fly, or is the question irrelevant?
How did you go from that hospital bed, old pal?
A leaf detaching, the cork loosening?
A branch bending with no apparent breeze
or weight of bird. A trick of faith erasing you from our lives?
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