When you said "I love you"
it was like a room that was built
on to an already finished house----
always an afterthought.

When you said "I miss you"
it was like drinking coffee
from a teacup----
it never made a difference

But when you made
the mountains we had built up
into valleys
I asked "why?"
And you said
"Erosion".

A book of poems
from a dead poet
living words
that keep on living
remembering a life
that has a ghost of a chance
at redemption
but every word redeems
a little something
of the soul that produced it
and in turn
redeems mine
in this life
where there's no certainty
of a next.

If I never get a chance to say "goodbye"
will this be enough?

If my last breath goes unheard
and my last wish unfulfilled

To see you again
to feel your caress

To hold your hand
and watch the twinkle in your eye

Diffuse through a tear
it will never be enough

Just to feel the dusk breeze
one last time

Coming off the marsh
to hear the mournful warnings

Of the Killdeer and Plover
and from their heavenly reaches

The hungry Least Terns diving into the salt pannes
a hundred thousand migrating Tree Swallows

Clouding the road and sky
like final scattered thoughts

And the inability to sustain
all this beyond a last silence.

...and when I finally showed up
and went into my mother's last room in the ICU
as the fluids were still clotting in their tubing
and the machinery of life was silent,
the necrosis lingered.
Her knitting was sitting to one side
with many loose ends
unresolved.

There was a time when I would've dutifully
left a note to my mother
pinned to the chest of my corpse swinging in the bathroom.

Then there was a time when I
wouldn't have left a note,
and finally there came a time
when I wouldn't have hanged myself.

He was too lazy
to put pennies in his loafers
and too cheap
to offer a penny for your thoughts
nickel & diming
his way through life
until the pennies had no value
and the thoughts weren't cost effective
and the income was disposable
and the outcome was predictable.

Your complexities
are compounded by my simplicities,
and since
you came to me
like the alphabet of a language
I cannot read
you will,
when you leave
depart unchanged.
Whereas,
I will be changed forever
like a root verb
which is built upon
to express
a more complex idea.