2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

in his voice, will not be spoken again, & which,
with his voice, probably will languish
in the prison of the page. And so at last
the poet and the poem will share
a mild entombment, or,
someday in Missoula, walking on Higgins,
a quick, bemused snatch of voice
then nothing.
I don’t expect to see him, striding
with his leather jacket and thin curlicues of hair,
that angelic or Rilkean profile,
even though he was, clearly, only a man
like any other, but one rifted with ore,
older than everyone, stunned
by song. I recall him now,
holding the delicious line,
delicious to him,
“like the sun she rises
in her flame flamingo infants’ wear” ––
that precious and baleful line
not his, but offered anyway, held out
like a child for baptism, held out
as I hold out this poem
in the already failing light.
Santa Fe Literary Review 47