let us remember our friend poetry
as he leaves us in the morning,
our late night coffee-friend
who made us taste his silver watch
to insure that it was real,
who spoke in geordic mode
about the Wild West skyscrapers,
who slipped us silent messages
with his easy body language and
his legs akimbo on our couch.

let us remember
our love poetry,
who we met
in executive bathrooms
because it was her thing,
whose words were painted with her
lips amd whose sex sighs made a
metaphor of standing,
let us remember the garden she
planted in front of our favorite
park to keep us nourished when the
market froze like concrete
and let us remember her golden
hairs as they lay across our ear,
speaking with feather sensation
to the heaviest of our parts.

let us remember our enemy poetry,
his bayonet held beneath our heart
and medals in our face, shouting
"Arbeit, Arbeit" (work, work)
as the barbed fences glowed with
electricity and our grandparents
turned to ashes.

let us remember our poetry,
spilled kerosene lamplight on
private nautical charts, hallowed
fire flickering across our
instruments, and shadows playing
across our course to island, to
coast, to reef, to shipwreck, to
beach, to shoals, to ourselves, to
ourselves, always, and of course.