by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Keel I built under me, sunk deep
           so as not to tip or flip or let
salt water rush through galley then
           angled bedroom in the bow.
Navigation keeps your now
           possible death in formless distance.
I can’t hear, can’t taste, can’t smell what all
           hovers in the air — polished glass
holds it back as strings and horns
           fall from hidden speakers, jazz
asking me to close eyes, forget
           buffleheads on swells — and each
time I think the water may
           not rise, roll, and break, but it does.
It does. Clouds combed into cornrows,
           held in place by a force I can’t
see, can’t conceive. My mind, my boat
           lacks the sails to fathom a world
without you, wind, brother, in it.

by Marita O’Neill

Rolling expanse of prairies, Midwest vowels,
wide and flat, lumbered always through
your voice, your gait, the round stone of your back.
In your absence, I listen for the crow’s fuss,

catch glimpses of you in strangers wearing
leather jackets, gray, unruly pony tails.
Standing beside you as you smoked Pall Malls,
you read us poems, gathered us in, drawing

words out from the inky blackness of your voice.
Once, you cupped your hands into a nest, offering

the moon, one earring with no match, one star without
a sky, and, lastly, a doorknob with no door to a room

we both considered but never entered. You knew
the temper of wood, the space of thresholds:
the way they hold a coming and a leaving.
You hated war and wanted only to write

until your hands bled, till the blue black pacing
of crows stopped like clock hands, telling the work
is done at last.     Always teaching.
If a man has to die, if a man’s heart has to fail,

let it be like this — writing words on birch bark, dancing
around fire, singing with young people, whittling
a carpenter’s pencil, telling anyone who listens,
you love your wife.

by John W. Hoy

The time is right
To take some stock —
To measure and assess stores of
Life’s dust mites: bent tacks, plies of veneer,
Old corks, pennies, rolls of canvas,
Empty cans and jars, loose metaphors, etc.
So I walk about from
Room to room to room —
Geography I ought to
Knew so well — and count the
Stuff that Michael passed my way.
His eyes could always
Recognize the waifs
To fit my style of seeing:
Poems, gull– winged books, jokes.

Some gems were not so much —
I have to note a really awful coat,
Howling of nonspecific British mammals,
Houndstooth with old, echoing brogues,
And deep pockets of promise,
The perfect size to sound with novels, or The
Café Review, and so on, and Michael
Saw the ugly thing, and thought of me.

Almost –old men with ancient memories
Too often he and I, we yammered,
Of far – off hamlets — smoke of peat
Drifting up from shallow hearths,
Our chat of pubs and ordinary sports
Like him and friends and me who wore those
Draping, garish, mothy tweeds.
Once, he lofted from his
Handy shelf an insulator —
Antique porcelain — to burnish tempered steel —
And dropped it in my grasp
To sharpen wood–shaving tales:
Warmth of hemlock, birch
And pine, and preparation,
Close work, dust and time.

I recall we stood in hallways.
Tools of trades in hands so wise —
He a measure always near, and
I clutching brilliant classroom exercise
Aiming toward proliferation
(A page no doubt I should have
Measured twice before I cut
From the printer) —
We talked and watched a world
Holding tight to acceleration, toward —
Comedy, was it, Michael?
Absurdity?
Faster, faster toward today.

I scope and measure now the hall,
Looking for his presence, and a
Foggy essence
Seems to stand there still,
Poem in hand, ethereal.
I somehow bring to focus
A phrase or two, or even
Pages, single words, but also,
Sight of quiet both typical and odd
A listening quiet, but more so —
His voice gone
To the next work order.

by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man comes home carrying a pineapple. His family and friends gather ’round him happily. No pineapple has entered this house for so long. A man strolls up the walk carrying a white bakery box of cinnamon morning buns, still warm. A man loves poetry and helps others publish it. This is very different from a man loving poetry and just writing it. This is a man carrying a pineapple, who doesn’t worry about pokes from its fancy hat. A man with range, with reach. A generous man. A man speaks his own poems in a richly resonant voice that has been feeding on pine cones and moss. Together we pause inside his rain, jazz, finely combed memory. The house is not yet finished. A dog knows him. Air knows him. When he came to earth in 1949 it was a different earth. This man called things up. Pieced them together. He said, his voice fanning out like a wind, write to me. So many thanked him for listening. So many bowed. So many knew the subtle ways he stayed.