Sing (for Steve Kowit)

Mail boxes in the ether
are filled with messages
of friends who are gone
without a good bye note,

There is chatter
and the clinking
of teaspoons against
the sides of small dishes,

No one knows
when they are leaving
on journeys to the end of the sentence,

So few of us
suspect that the
period at the
will finally be placed,

a dot will
mark the spot,

Mail of all sorts
are in  voices terse and harsh
under the light
we read them in,

Sing low and loud and high
and through the roof
and the nails that hold
things together,

There might be
no  words
of goodbye
but maybe

We can leave some words
that sing about
why any  of us
stayed so long
and hung by our nails
and the whisper strands of our wish
to speak to the mountains
and streams
and the cities where
dreams collect
and churn
and become awful
and real while we invent joy
and find
ourselves with each other
and become grateful
that we don't breath the air alone,

We need mail that opens up
with laughter
that brings on the tears
of remembering that
makes us laugh yet again,

We need
letters to remind us
that no gets to say
goodbye as they wish they could say it
but that we can tell each other
that we're here
for as long as this party lasts
into the night
and the morning beyond that.