I feel like a Yank
Returning to this rugged
Remoteness
Her face in repose
Utterly unfamiliar
In death
It is her voice
That remains
The bright kindliness
With which she used
To speak my name
Summoning summer days
Of another time
Young men
Fishing
Fast driving
Effortless friendship
I remember
David diving
Into the bottle-green
Calm of the deep
To retrieve the oar
That had slipped
Drifting away
Like a prophecy
Coming back
To the shallow shore
And the dying
Out of our friendship
I still don’t know
How we became
Such strangers
I think of him now
Pray for him sleeping
Slipping away
Far away from here
The innocent bed
We shared back then
In the way that young friends did
As close in soul
As in body
The tender warmth
Of it
The beauty
And though it is lost
It is a history
That abides within my soul
Treasured
