clear blue fabric lines the streets
before my eyes, it is punched through
and then repaired, by warm-colored fingers
of people, standing there, afraid to linger
but their eyes pierce the veil of silence.
I've turned my music down and taken
off my sunglasses to listen to the smell
of light, it's gnarled and frosty and soothing
breezing and ruffling, something a bit too tough
an athlete of a wind, not concerned with me
approaching a higher goal, playing rough
through my hair, content to let it be
but not- at the same time. We
change the world we live in, regardless
of intentions. Flow through my vents
or my windows, I don't care, I
will still breathe you in and inhale your scent
even though I try to drive so far as to leave you behind
the seasons pass, grow, and fade away
I forget the worlds in which we used to play
something in the careless whisper, I can hear the ocean
in your heartbeat. It's a word that you say.
It's you, shaking your hair down, in one particular way.
And it's me, driving and forgetting and learning to give you away.
Day by day. Day by day.

The time I saw New York
I cried
I cried for all the things I could remember
in a thin burgundy slip on some empty set of stairs

It was two minutes before midnight
“A New Year”
Something I wanted so much to be true
but I hid my face and wept

When I saw
that all the young girls and old men
in fancy clothes down below
didn’t disappear
or move or change

Instead, danced in circles
mirroring the portraits of my shame

Spinning
around and around,
Stuck in their own involuntary pulls
of gravity

Even after ten years
of living alone
the coal mine depth
of the morning silence
stuns me.
Time was, it could be
pierced by Mozart,
birdsong, poetry.
Now it has become
an impenetrable,
invisible wall
that I strain at
but cannot
hear through.
I accept that it
is permanent.
I know that when
the silence ends,
I will too.

I knew he was dying
I thought maybe a few weeks left
So still and so quiet
This man whose laugh made us all laugh
The man who always had ideas
Where to go, what to do for a laugh
Always a laugh
Sharer of adventures
Partner in crime
For thirty-six crazy years
Dying before my eyes and
Taking much of my life with him

He'd had a massive stroke a year earlier
They said he'd die then
But he defied them and recovered a lot
Proper conversations and learning to walk
Then they discovered that he had cancer
And here we were five weeks later
"How long are you gonna be in here?" I asked
He turned his head and looked hard at me
"I die next week," he said
As though he had an appointment

He got three days, not a week
I cried seeing him dying
But I was relieved for him when he did
Now my old friend is gone
And it's a duller world without him

                                       By Phil Roberts