death impinges

 without Jimmy

death impinges on my world,

I lost a wonderful grandmother to cancer

when I was single digits,

my father as I turned 14 to a heart attack,

my heroes in the 1960s to assassinations,

I did learn from all that loss to appreciate each moment,

now death after death comes close to me,

as if someone is lobbing mortar shells at me

and slowly getting range and direction right,

my best friend from high school

started slipping four months ago,

each time the doctors thought they'd named it,

and then worked to treat it,

another failure mode activated,

and Jimmy continued to slip, and slip, and slip away,

till the bottom was too close and he could not endure,

a text finds its way to me that he is going,

then another that he is gone,

I think of myself as smart:

Jimmy was smarter,

I think of myself as a good person,

Jimmy was better,

I stand at his grave, 

with his brother by my side,

and my tears well up, 

as does a prayer,

and then we talk,

each of us so full of love and admiration for Jimmy

that we share questions, stories,

each of us reaching to hold

what keeps slipping way from our grasp,

the reality of this amazing human being

far grander than what our words can sketch,

the world keeps turning and we each have new paths to walk,

without Jimmy our futures feel emptier than they did with him,

I leave the cemetery and his brother

and walk the walk that still calls to me,

even without him, 

except how he's in my heart, 

and my memory.

by Henry H. Walker

March 29, ‘23