What stays with you latest and deepest? Of curious panics
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
—Walt Whitman
1.
In my early years I spoke in many languages.
Then I grew quiet.
(This is not an obituary.)
Some of my dreams faded,
if they could count as dreams.
I was a good friend,
though I mostly called
when there was no one else
I was a poet,
though I only wrote
when there was nothing else
(That was often enough.)
2.
I was truly in love once, as least as I remember it.
A boy from another country said,
I intend to go alone,
which was not what I intended.
I learned to sleep in a hammock,
my body sagging to the floor.
I bathed in the river fully clothed:
the cotton clung, translucent.
(A man watched from the outer banks.)
I spent the night on an ancient pyramid,
monkeys shrieking through the trees,
I bribed a guard to leave me alone,
and there was no one left to tell.
3.
A young man skipped ahead on the trail.
I must have said, Wait.
(Years passed.)
How could I say goodbye?
I sealed leftovers in ziplock bags;
I wore a flowered bathrobe.
I began to listen to books on tape,
especially biography.
(This is not an obituary.)
There was a jungle-book ending:
strands of dirty-blond light
shone through the spreading palms.
