99poems/sherley

Back then
we were all young,
you lean against
your bent hand
for a book jacket photo.
We wrote poems
and posed for papers.
And then what?
All those years
of life we never
talk about.
That led us
one by one
to death –
or the swollen pains
of middle-age.
Sherley, I will
miss you.
The things we
should have
spoken of,
left unsaid.

7/21/99