And good luck
Two Poets, the author and Robert Sund, circa 2001, Image by Terry John Pratt
Anyone
Who knows me,
Will not be surprised
To see me writing about
Death, especially on this
The week of my 75th birthday.
Patti says I should title this poem,
“One foot in the grave”
Since I’ve had one in there for 40 years.
But today, while
Alphabetizing my
Books of poetry
I came across
Some books,
(Some signed and others not,)
By poets who’d once been close friends.
And I found a couple
A poet I knew
In the 1960’s in Seattle.
He was on the run from
The Vietnam draft
Back then
And was one of the
Most free and happy people
I ever met.
Finding his two books,
I Googled him
And saw that
He’s dead.
He died in 2003.
A few hours after I looked him up
I remembered that I had
Heard about him dying
Long enough ago
That I’d forgotten it.
And his poems never caught-on
Nor did the govt. ever catch him.
I guess changing “Wilson” to “Wilsun”
And a digit or two on his SS card,
Was enough to save him.
Thus can poets die, over and over again.
Where am I going with this?
Like every reader and every writer
Of every poem,
We’re all gonna die one day …
Poets dead and dying
And
Already dead but still dying
And
Just plain old Dead:
Like Don Wilson, RIP.
A mentor to both Don
And I, in Seattle circa 1968
Was the poet Robert Sund
Also gone now.
All we poets
All of us going or gone.
RIP Don Wilsun
RIP Robert Sund.
And someday, RIP
me.
Robert Sund and fellow poet, me, circa 1968
Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash