Belated Elegy
You and I were never close, and likely
thought we knew each other better
than we could. But we were
familiar with each other, and earlier
spent time in company.
You attended our wedding dinner.
We visited you. In the later
days of my addiction, you were
‘on call’ on two or three or four
occasions. You stayed with AA forever.
Once an addict... remember.
We published your local poetry
collection, Pushing at Silence. And after
we escaped to Cambridge, there
was an exchange of emails about poetry
and form, about where prosody
might make meaning.
We can barely
have drifted apart when we were
never really alongside each other.
I felt you weren’t there when I was publicly
under pressure — a bet either
way, rather than ‘all in’, but really
I was searching for something
you were in no position to deliver.
Mea culpa. The lateral drift continuing.
But there was much in common.
And there were moments of wry
humour. I valued your poems celebrating
the everyday, jazz, poetry, the earth... and simply
being. I’ve said little since your passing,
and now this demi-hymn...
to a friendship of sorts, but of a very
particular sort, wouldn’t you say?
Or would you respond in some jazzy meter:
read slower... read slower... read slower.
John Kinsella
and see Tracy's elegy for Andrew here.
