miss

There isn’t much I’ll miss—

a few people, the mountains,

most dogs, all babies—

even the ones that can’t stop

crying on planes or at the movies,

the babies you should let me soothe 

but you fear me, never knowing

what makes you fear me is

what makes babies cry,

your dissembling truths and

weaknesses you have mistaken 

for your power. Anyway

it is too late in this poem,

I am gone and only missing 

all that my absence will allow.

There’s the poets and the artists,

writers and players and musicians,

the keepers of lore and the sharers of song.

The bugs and the beasts, 

oceans blue and forests deep.

Gone a little, gone all along 

the question is who is doing

all this missing, sitting in some bowl,

broken upon some rocks, sinking in the sea,

no there there, no me to be

beset by fruits and burdens,

relieved of the beautiful horror of being.

I’ll miss the words that linger,

the words carried down the years,

your voice and art and poems

(though we all know that I can’t)

sorted from the letters of the living

never written in the book of life

or the list of laurels, all this love lost.

I will miss everything. I will miss it all.