Dear David

by Agneta Falk

Dear David
In memory of David Meltzer

I lost the poem I wrote you many years ago
the only copy I had of, DANCING SYLLABLES

the day after you died I read it at the New Year’s
Day Celebration, I must have put it on the

table and somehow it got crumpled up
with the rest of that shitty year.  Ever since

I can’t stop thinking about it, trying to
remember some of the lines, but all I end

up with is a long empty corridor with closed
doors, just like the feeling I have of you no

longer being here in person, just know that
behind those doors lie the gift you left

the memories of you dancing those syllables
those words, clinking them together

so smoothly, so roughly, melodiously in and out
of sync, just like that fat cossac you slimmed

down in your poems before you released them
so elegantly, wittily, a solo trumpeter in the night

and that mischievous smile of yours, making light
out of darkness, bending your ear to the silliest

things, turning them on their head, putting it in its
place offbeat, to the point, giggling out of every

corner of your brain, tossing the whole goddamned
idiocy of this and that conundrum of life’s little

foibles, turning them into gems.  The doors in that
corridor begin to open, there’s so much light

coming through, the tree of light, a bird on every branch
singing your songs and, through it all, your eyes

those eyes, as always, smiling.