I used to write poetry and woke with a fragment floating around the last remnants of a dream today. Like an old song, one that came through the static of a radio 30 years ago. It began “Belive it, hip sucks…” and ended with some notion about being crazy about illiviation. There was a butterfly slicing the air like paper to flesh, letting bad blood flow. It became the ink and asked what was the advantage of taking pen to paper. Poems, elegies, even a last thought are only for the living, to give us comfort or fading solace.

Even at 44 you were too young to die, but that was your choice. You let loose in the black ribbons of storm that have no gauge or alliance. I woke and rushed to write the poem, but each line I tried to put to paper faded like our youth, like the image of the trails that ran through Woodbridge Valley; each line failed to capture the truth of our lives.

There was a low stream that stumbled under a canopy of oaks, feeding on the eroding bank, muddying our feet as we ascended the other side. Perhaps it rushed by in ragtime, perhaps it was was where the silence I become lost in rose from.

I can not really remember where it began, perhaps on a dirt hill where the wind pulled the clouds down. I only know where it ends, where I will turn to stare back ‘why?’ and ‘convince me it was real.’

Perhaps I did not write you a poem because they tend to distract us from the flowers around the grassy knoll, the rivers bend, as much as they offer comfort or attempt to give form to our grief.

Yes, that stream became a river rushing by many trees before becoming the sea and returning as rain. If I look closely I can still see the rainbow at midnight hearing of your death gave birth to. If I look closely I can see your dark eyes peering into the cool blue pools of mine.

Yes, that brief glimpse of water in the forest could grow a spark to a flame, could in burning commanded a vision, the angry blind that only now lifts when we can’t look back.

If I knew last Tuesday, perhaps i would have picked up the phone, took your hand and walked with you from the forest toward a new horizon, one that we could forever see draped in the sunrise. Perhaps I wouldn’t need to write these words for you.