for Andrea Gibson
“Who possesses a perfect soul?” — Rimbaud
I am reading Rimbaud on
my porch when I hear you have died.
It is a thick July morning.
The ceiling fan stirs a slow potion of
lazy haze and the slow sun efforts to
rise above the trees. The leaves
are a muted green and gold. Tired birds sing.
My soul is patched and stitched
together, much of the mending amateurish
and clumsy, but there is evidence
here too of your deft hand,
your words woven into thin threads,
sutures to stop the bleeding of dreams.
It occurs to me that you are
the answer to the poet’s rhetorical question:
to remove the border between life and death
is to traverse the invisible horizon
at the ocean’s end on a moonless night.
I am learning. I wield
the delicate needle of your wisdom
to sew up the hole you’ve left in my world,
only to discover you’ve beaten me to it.
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