Drifting Away

 

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