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
1 comment:
A beautifully sad poem. Both here and in Unearthed you capture so well digital memorialisation. We've got to the digitised point that it's too easy to feel that those who've left no trail on the internet never existed.
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