Have We Met, Sir

Have we met, sir?

You ask after who I am

Introduced to me as a sailor

I am introduced to you as a love poet

But I do not write on love

I write on the inevitability of death

Have we met, sir?

You ask after who I am

I am atoms bent in the art of impersonation

You say all artists are liars

Actors, writers, music makers

I say they are equivocators

My family is undertakers

And I write on the inevitability of death

Have we met, sir?

In the scales, in the chimes

In the cane, cut back

From last year's blackberry vines

In the mainsails, luffing in a red morning sky

In the incandescence lost

When you close your eyes

Do you know your way home by the stars?

Do streetlights pollute where you are?

Was it you, sir?

Stirred hurricane lilies by my bed

Put pennies in my mouth

And count each life I have led

Is this the bridge that descends into the ocean?

Is this the blue I never come back from?

Are you the gray-eyed one?

Are you my last companion?

There was always something in the snow

About you that I wanted

Was it I so loved the light when I was the dark?

Here we meet, sir, here we part