For Randall Kruk

Although no stranger to yourself,
you were your own undiscovered country,
always pressing on some border of awareness,
always asking more of who you were.

You were the one who asked of life,
who spoke for spirits and for memory,
who wished us at that last meeting over coffee
to have the time of our lives in Madison.

You demonstrated time and time again
the plain necessity of kindness, of honesty.
That would be your legacy, my friend, your gift -
and in the giving, you became that gift.

After all the words spoken in memoriam,
the Guinness and the soul-soothing jazz,
there came a shifting bow of color in the sky -
rain pouring from a blue cloud at evening.