Stefanie Bennett- A Poem

COLLOQUY for Michael Dransfield        

 

What can I say to you, for you are dying

In a too young

And delicate way.

My thoughts become terminal.

My tongue; it coagulates.

 

I suppose it goes without mention.

You’re gifted enough

So many

Try to impersonate. Does death

Debate unto itself

 

I’ve often wondered? And while

We’re ‘at it’, who then

                           Keeps score

Of the give and take! Who other

Than the ones left behind drag

            The branding-iron’s

Rusty fate...

 

The flame draws fore and aft from that

Half-opened door. Winter’s already

Crossed your eyelids shaded

In pale musings –, marking

Time it’s called

 

... Still-life with broken chair set on

Runners wild enough

To sail the moon

                          Face down.

You wrote a song about it.

‘Dying’s easy... !’

 

Come Spring, I’ll be over it –, as you

Are already over it. There’ll

Just be the legacy

Of another

Literary grief.

 

I write... because I must. You die

Because you will.

 

 

 

Stefanie Bennett has published several volumes of poetry and had poems appear with Pyrokinection, Snow Monkey, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dead Snakes, Mad Swirl and others. Of mixed ancestry [Italian, Irish, Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Australia in 1945. Stefanie’s latest poetry title ‘The Vanishing’ was published by Walleah Press, 2015.