Everybody’s got somebody

who’s wandered off—

to another city,

another lover,

to disease, to death,

it doesn’t matter,

they’re gone.

And we’re haunted.

Watch any group,

at a bus stop, say—

we’re a row of quivering

strings with spaces between

where somebody

was and that’s why

the wind is musical, it

can sidle up and

strum us. And if some

weird express pulled up

and its driver said

Hop aboard, let’s

bring back the lost,

never lost at all

but merely late to dinner,

the dear face,

the dear fingers—

who wouldn’t ride

to Hell and back

if that’s all it took—

If that’s all it took

who wouldn’t trade away

every requiem,

every elegy, blues

all the sad arias, the ode

and the nightingale too,

just so much noise.

Bonnie Jacobson

Stopping for Time. 1989. GreenTower Press. Maryville, MO.