CALL ME BELOVED

You are on my mind. Often. I had wanted to write you a poem
but I found that I’d already written one, fourteen years back –
gushed all my gratitude, already, even employed better words
than I had planned. I just found my final portfolio, you see.
That Happy happy life! you penned out behind the final page,
the holy mantra I carried under my breath through the years.

And what should I shout to you, now, past mortal planes, years
after enduring my reckless free verse – mewling, fawn-like poems,
those clumsy, first footsteps of grief and rapture scratched on page
while you wielded forms like a surgeon. Ice cold. I was taken aback
by your precision – finely faceted sestinas cut like prisms, let us see
heartbreaking spectrums of language, whole kaleidoscopes of words.

I’ve tried to be happy, Dr. Bridgford, but I wrapped myself in words,
I mummified my heart – embalmed the calm inner voices light-years
deep and far away, now I must carefully excavate exhibits so I can see
myself in sunlight, again, a patchwork sewn from bones and poems –
oh, but the happiness? Well, you saw those reaches, professor – back
when I thought identity was what you wrestled down onto the page,

I believed all contentment had to be proven, filed with cover pages –
an explicit, bullet-pointed résumé, faithful testimony through words
that yes, cosmos, I’m paying attention, those sunbeams down my back
are warm like each hand I ever held, yes, I’ll flail – fight back the years
of dissociation – I was certain you had answers, professor, knew poems
spoke with a sacred power, pierced all foggy veils so finally – you see.

I’ve tried to be happy, professor. I try to keep writing myself out, see
how enjambment, twee slant rhymes dancing past bone white pages
help a soul cope while time erodes, but even the most ardent poems
cannot build up an identity, you can’t construct a person from words
and now, I know – my golem of notebooks still walks beside me years
after I gave the pain structure and form, you can’t just take those back.

Now I find that I don’t want to. You passed away, just five years back –
stark loss which struck me with a sudden knock of clarity – now I see
why, my earliest idol had died – I felt that springtime air, again, years
before that approaching drumbeat of grief and loss, a kid with a page
behind a final project where a remarkable woman offered up her words –
said yes, I see you. I hold such soaring hopes for you. I loved your poems.