ELEGY Poem: Elegy, by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

It doesn’t matter how I start out these poems
they end up as laments for my strays—
the ones who wandered off and the ones
who traveled to New York or to Chicago,
where my childhood bestie ended up.
The ones I know died; ones I imagine speak to me—

the musician who blew his head off
with his therapist’s gun and the poet
who tried to save me from history.
We’re not in touch but I keep them
in living memory with the gymkhana pony
who went to glory with her head in my lap
and my granddaughter, atomized on a two-lane
by a lumbering eighteen-wheeler.

What a dinner party we have when I call them
to the table, each beloved face shining with appetite.
And you, others, so many dead or dying, whether or not
I know you, all I write now is your elegy.

Author: poetryfest

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