TELL ME WHAT I OWE

Author: Philip Kuhn

(In memory of John Reimer)

Tell me what I owe when rain beats

down on a calendar of old times

and scatters the riches of our friendship

as a body of habits comes to death

having made no notice of our bond

tell me what I owe now that you are gone

when one bird yet sings and your thrilling

laughter is just an echo down an alley where

the bums bring no discipline or courtesy

as they hunt the shiver of a cheap drug

(his lungs had built mucous catacombs

and oxygen could not auction well to blood

recently he had said how tired he was

and as he got ready for work alone

on a Friday morning his heart quit)

the late-night phone call took air from me

even misery does not want to take

such jolts unveil us and pull love

to clemency for a while

but we ride a patchwork sleep

what memories will reach the morning

on our way to anywhere after such news

and the slug of a Mobius dream

as birdlike we try again to pledge

to flight despite the molt of a heart in grief

tell me now old friend from that celestial

chair beside your brother and father

your brave ode to decency departed

to the next life you so worshipped here

what do I owe this solitary shore

Philip Kuhn is a poet, editor and teacher. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Florida Quarterly, Calliope, and elsewhere. One of them was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the editor of A Dream Goes on Forever, Vol. 2, The Utopia Years, a rock-and-roll biography, and others. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and now lives in Wilson, NC.