Hard Lesson :

Have I said to you everything

that’s needed to say?

**

While the words pull at me,

a spent cigarette smolders in the safety-tray,

a car moves, screeching, up the road,

and, somewhere,

a kid confronts the probable conflicts of the street.

**

Have I told you of all I worry about?

All the worries of my mis-spent youth,

calling back to you;

recalling the presence of doubts and fears,

and the unasked tingle up the spine:

A darkened vision of the dead man,

lying next to a coffee table.

**

The memory of a loss conjures these things.

**

I’m clasping my chest, recalling the absence,

the shock, I felt

on a day like any other:

That empty chair,

tugging at me,

in its solidity;

the silence, encompassing the circle

of a hard lesson learned.

`x~William ~copyright, 03/06/09.