I knew you as one
with a fierce intelligence,
bringing presence as a
gift and sometimes a
curse, full of swagger and
eager to show-off and
echo out your verse that
came from you as a force
that seemed to exist as
an whisper from ancient days.

But now the force is shifting
to less–diminishing in the
disintegration that must come–but
why you when in your wisest of
years, when you had more to give,
life itself came in the silence to
retrieve what was gifted in youth?

 

20/8/2022