Time to time I reread a friend’s poem
And linger over it like I’m reading time,
As though I’m sipping bourbon
And seeing him at his typewriter,
Hearing his voice and laughter,
Smelling the viridescence of the room
Just before we’d venture in and wade
Into the tropic waters of metaphor
Like distance swimmers without shores.
His passion is all in the poem,
A lifetime of fought hard for words
And their fading and ruined bells.
Even the typed page into which letters
Seem embedded in prima materia
Carries the faint scent of the grass
We shared at our last council of war
Against chaos and time.
It’s like the poem’s burning the incense
Of the intangible back into my mind.