for Jim Tipton
Margaret tells me
that while in a morphine stupor,
our friend told her I am dead.
I take the news of my death
rather well, I think,
remembering that just this morning
I ate blackberries
and pulled on my shoes
and drove a winding road.
But my friend, he is close
to death, his hand so tired
he signed only half his last name
in his book Margaret sends to me.
Reading it, he is in the room,
his voice still baritone and booming,
speaking of high desert honey and mesas
and cinnamon. I meet him there,
startled by how close he feels,
and when the book is over,
how enormous the emptiness.