There is no good way to say goodbye so
we went into woods, bearing through the nettles
wearing old tennis shoes and dirty jeans
and we found a deer trail to take us down
into the canyon where our stream has lived for eons
We wandered the creek bed, looking for special rocks
glossy caramel pebbles, pieces of broken glass
bits of ancient coral frozen in limestone
and we didn’t know what to do with them
so like six-year-old boys, we put them in a pile
in a way that seemed right
and we left them there
And in the end, we didn’t really say goodbye
because we didn’t have much to say
but that’s how, on a quiet day in mid-September
we happily remembered our old friends
Matt & Brent—dearly loved, now missing.
Author’s Notes:
I don’t have a lot to say about this poem, other than it felt good to write. I have a group of close friends from home that has now lost two members in sudden, untimely ways. We recently got together as a way to remember Matt in particular (who died earlier this year) and of course thought a lot about Brent too, who died when we were still in school.