for Rick, Shep, Blue, Earl....

 

 

You get the letter letting you move,

and we’re stalled in the halls,

say good-bye, remeet, say good-bye--

like the guest’s car in the drive after dinner,

revved then idled while we lean on the quarter panel,

unable to release the face behind the windshield.

 

Not like the movies where we’d know the hour,

stand at the last gate, and clap your back.  No,

one day John kites me, or Earl buries

in a two-page letter, “I suppose

you’ve heard, he’s gone,” and so he has.

I read the African poets on passage,

 

“Oh, my concern overpowers me,” writes

Ofeimun to Achebe, “I do not know

how to escape from such winds

as bear you now away.”  I try

to imagine less security than medium,

say a murderer round a corner,

 

a blade from his disciplined anus--

but that story’s only out of max.  One move

out of minimum means finding work and food

and medicine.  It is no security at all.

So I sit here choked like a bad carburetor,

the journalist who has all that,

 

confusing the visiting room with the fact

it’s not me, but the host must go.

I gun your engine for a richer mixture,

wish you the speed of God, let out your clutch,

but oh, my concern overpowers me.

I cannot escape such winds as bear you now away.

 

 

 

Cincinnati Poetry Review, 1993

© Diane Kendig