Afterthought: a poem

Afterthought

A whole half-life has happened since you went.

Thirty-five years. Whose life was that? Mozart

had so much – it was more time than you got.

You stayed just long enough to reach “grown-up”

and that was it. It’s not about talent

wasted, or what you might have been: who gives

a shit about accomplishments? Not us,

not now. On the far side of the planet

from anything you saw or could have guessed,

looking up weather, I noticed the date

and thought of you. This is the way you ghost,

through numbers, intimations, other lives.

No Google search will ever turn you up

your relics are in hard copy, or lost.

Or in my poem. Thirty-five times round,

and I am sure I’m not alone to note

this, where you rise for an instant to cross

a scattered consciousness, then fall to rest.

Tracy Ryan