Peter Thompson

               

               Words Arrive

Words arrive at a spillway of loss

slip toward me and away

A friend writes of loss

Words arrive

each falls away irretrievably

drifts among sad companions

Words serial yet failing to link

and I am made public

Alone I am shorn of them

so it is conveyed to others

Indignation so great it is public

The edge of fate swung wide

in a gathering place

it leaves us all throatless

A pain so great you scramble

to find him in it

and it comes off less as my friend

than as sorrow’s canny translation

A thing never spoken so how

is this his voice

what is still to learn

A loss that is written

Words were they poem or

letter or notes to be read in a church

hauled themselves hunched and glinting

through all of these

any of these

signaling a permanence

a scandal clothed and accompanying

they can never address again

Are they the tare weight

or the heavy thing itself?

His metaphors superseded

further signs revolving into view

And with this new failing

my own fall forward

A solace not imagined

and not asked

A gift imagined

and with daring

never given

A child hauls truth

from a point in the sky

A man is left with paint

that refuses to dry

We are left with our footsteps

and words which bump confusedly

Words scratching in the air

boons to each other

hung in the sere meandering

in the sky now draped at our door

© Peter Thompson

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