Haunted by a Poem Someone I love has died. It's early morning. The coffee maker is playing Bach. He tells me you visited last night without telling me it was you. As soon as he said he could see only legs striding down the hall and his dog that jumped from bed and barked, once, twice? until somewhere along the french doors, you disappeared. He turned on his flashlight to view the room. I've been writing poetry, I confess to this son who is the engineer, for whom poetry is like this visitation. He looks at me as if he doesn’t know who I am. I've been writing a lot of poetry, I repeat. There are always three things. Presence, witness, unrest. I like to think you arrived for the holiday but something tells me you’re pacing. You adored this oldest son of mine, his own stride on mountains you both held dear. I know why he was not given more of you, only your legs moving from my grieving words toward him, to tell him you were a coward, which is somehow what he needs to hear to staunch his heart from your frantic last notes: I want to live. But how you went back on your word. And how late it is. And how sorry you are. We are haunted by your death. And you haunt us back. It's an arrangement, like a sonnet. If poetry is really an echo asking a shadow to dance, then these words are that echo.” If you cannot be the poet, be the poem. “Now you are practicing walking in the dark feeling your way while the pull of your death wanes and your clutch around our hearts weakens, if it will. We are haunted by poems.