On any given day, a line or two will flash behind my eyes, like a photograph of your poem taken from yet another angle. The words spin and strut, lie down and stretch out long. They show sides and more sides, dividing like cells, and I wonder if you built them that way on purpose, to be remembered by people like me--people waiting for trains, stepping through snow, pushing past the elbows of strangers. People who guard your words closely like secrets, your rhythms always in tow.

The girl in the poem, I imagine that you loved her, that in those years she was your reason for art. I imagine weak suburban lights leaking in through your window as you wrote, your eyes dark with depth of thought, your own sacred blueprint slating each dimension, the fruit of each stanza sliced fresh and with ease. When it was finished, did you rise up from your seat and then bow, seeing the curtain of that great moment close? Even still, I am your standing ovation.

As I read it again today, new images spill from the page into puddles at my feet, and I scramble to save them before they drift off unnoticed. I fear that you are no longer a poet, that instead you are a salesman, a postman, a scientist. A reporter who now tells only the facts, an attorney who represents everyone but himself. A father whose children grow up unsuspecting of the footprints he leaves, wise and beautiful, on hearts.