Introduction       

 

I had a friend who because of a heart condition

 Was told by the doctor that he should take a room

    With somebody he knew.

       Someone not afraid of death.

          Someone not afraid of finding the body of a friend.

   A good friend of ours graciously consented.

    Close to a year later my friend with the heart condition died.

      If there was a good thing about this

  It was what he requested be put on his headstone,

          “Read, and be happy.” 

   This seemed appropriate

                   Since he was found with a book open on his chest.

 

Another friend who was himself

                   A poet, editor, and publisher

  Was asked by another poet whom we both knew

          If he could stay on his back porch for a while.

    It was there that he died.

  When I heard about this, I asked the editor,

          “Wasn’t all of this hard on him?”

“No,” he replied calmly. “It was all very natural.”

 

Another friend whom drugs had taken into the bowels of life

  Was allowed to sleep in the bar where his ex-wife worked.

     It was there he was found in what appeared to be a deep sleep.

          The workers cleaning the bar did not want to disturb him

   As he seemed so peaceful.

 

One of the many jobs I worked while I lived in Berkeley

  Was that of a night clerk in a resident’s hotel.

    One of the residents was a 60’s radical who had traveled to Russia and China.

 He would often come down at night

   To challenge any notions or illusions I might have about the world we lived in.

Later I heard that this man had been stricken with the disease

  That had become the plague of the late Twentieth Century.

    He was being taken care of by another Berkeley type,

A man who had given away most of his worldly processions

And had chosen to live the solitary life of contemplation.

 

These pieces are for those people

            But not necessarily about them.