“the tongues of dying men /
enforce attention like deep harmony.”
—W. S. Shakespeare
One final time, we wait
for you to speak the truth
we know you knew.
Your dry tongue clicks,
lips like gaping fish.
Not air you strain
from or to, but the wish
to speak of beauty, harmony,
and truth. Too late.
We come too late in the day
for you to say, and yet we stay
suspended in the possibility
that the air we breathe
has molecules of you
dissolved and thrown
against the deeply mortal reef.
When finally we leave,
our nets are filled, heavy with
the poetry we seek.
