In Memoriam
J.T. Ledbetter
For Jeff Birk
Student, Poet, Voyager
(California Luthern University)
Where are the images now?
Where do the metaphors go
when the bright blood leaves?
I
Just when he knew he would die
no one can tell.
They brought the new machine
to take his blood awhile and return
it clean and bright.
He nodded to me and asked
for blankets for his legs...
"You never could spell, Jeff..."
(a smile then)
"But you wrote fine poems. Really
good ones ... I can't spell either..."
And then his legs grew colder
and he lapsed into silence.
The nurses watched his eyelids flutter...
When his mother came in I left
and took off the paper mask
that separated my breath from his.
II
The traffic smothered him from me
as the freeway-eating sun pulled me toward
the ocean where mists still hovered
in the barrancas and red-tail hawks wheeled
high over the mesquite stuck in the orange cliffs
and where students walk through Kingsman Park,
their dreams in the sky...
|
