To Live

If there are people dying
then there are always people to write about the dying
to lift the shovels and dig for the dying
to preach about the dying.

Even now
there is my grandmother
gone four years
and I raise a glass on the couch
to Joan,
and think four years, my god,

what have I done?

This is how we keep track of the dying,
by what we have or haven’t done
in the time they have been gone
as if that adds time to our own old clocks.

So Joan, here’s what I have done:
I have paced hard floors with dry cracked feet,
I have written
small things at night in secret.
I have been to Europe and fallen in love
with sad girls on Spanish street corners,
with the whores on Grand Via
with the waiters at La Rotunde
with the bard’s grave and church stones.

Joan, I have fallen in love.

And I have tried, so very hard
to breath each day,
to make tea,
to catch a sunrise in Brooklyn,
just to live, Joan.
To live.