First Word

I, a crumpled-up letter in the breast-

pocket of a dead poet. Physicians

had tried to revive him for a long

time, but earth's medications failed.

Too bad he didn't get beyond that letter.

('Too bad it was discarded.' Who said that?)

Perhaps he had started to write a long poem--

The personal pronoun, a friend once said,

makes for a sorry beginning. No need

to apologize for the vast ivory blankness

that followed. He decided to stop,

crunch (the I) up, die, and start over.

       --First appeared in STAND, Vol. 20 (2), 2022,                        

                                           University of Leeds

 

Commentary

Hasn't the author gotten beyond 'the I' yet? Perhaps not, but he's getting much closer. Nothing like cancer to enable one to become a lot more I-less. Nothing like the threat of Big D Death to scatter the little d deaths--the false prides of wounded existence--like sand crabs scurrying into their holes before the big wave hits.

The tsunami is almost here.  Once I becomes U, Who cares?