Easeful blue eyes imitated
A kind of fervent candour
Whilst I tired to focus on the image
Of your old explicit face
When you asked me if I’d eaten that day
Your eyes returned to acceptance
A life enveloped in kindness expires
Like any other being’s sad passage
Yet a stopped heart and impulse free brain
Shouldn’t make you less of a human
Your behavioural traits and single acts
Became cellular testimonies for
Us part-time humanitarians
You share your name with a yank poet
And didn’t care a jot of ink on paper
Your words floated and then evaporated
Leaving a yearning for their repetition
Like a song just ended on the wireless
Having made your face flush with dance
Just stopped
I have your altruistic cardigan
It lives, half secluded, on my book shelf
Above Keats and all your mother loved
They didn’t mean anything to you
The big questions do not matter anyway
Just the nineteen sixties and seventies
It’s downy and pink like your skin had been
And likes to be folded with prudent surety
It has yet to absorb any selfish tears
Like the ones from a kid with a scraped knee
Not a man who said some words aloud once
I don’t think it will ever serve that purpose
Your personal rude atoll of solid earth
Is all there is to inspire a descent
Grab on and hold on like everyone does
There are no choices to burden and break
A reticent approach which avoids dreams
Just the primal will to grab and hold on
Like everyone does