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.