It would be water

how it comes from the sky because I am dry   because

I am thirsty    reaching down for roots I can feel

& up for dream & because I need the wet the release

of flood    but not too much   that would have been the daily

April poem then I snuck into a little place for pasta   talked

myself into believing I deserved a treat   thinking I was

anonymous   & there was Meena’s husband David with friends

eating & laughing   we greeted awkwardly   I stayed at my

corner table   red wine & rigatoni   all I could think about was

Meena’s thick shiny nearly black hair    how I didn’t manage

to visit her that last year of illness although I said I would

she sent me poem & photo    told about losing her hair

I said it looks beautiful short   that I was thinking of cutting

mine    don’t do it she said    don’t cut your hair then she 

was gone    her photo in my office so anyone who enters 

will know   her poems moving around like waves    tulip 

stems   high pitched elegant voice articulating 

how the world begins & ends     how verse continues 
 

Copyright © 2021 by Kathy Engel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 23, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I try to talk with the departed. Usually near water. I wanted to talk with Meena, to tell her, honor her, thank her. Feeling her voice and poems like waves. And aware of my awkwardness in that rainy April night. The alone and the not alone. The ongoing. When and how one can or can’t show up in the way one hopes to. The liminal space between what we call living and what we call dead. What poems offer. Elegy as life force. This was an April poem and I thank, with love, Elma’s Heart Circle, with whom I write.”
—Kathy Engel