Blackjack!

                for Halie

Now I sit me down to stay

until I’ve said what I meant to say

when the leaves were green

and the birds perched on my shoulder

(how now the withered leaves look like me

and there’s but a torrent of crows 

that always get the singing wrong).

Enough of that! Say what

you meant to say, your one last wish,

(a benevolent stranger bestowed three on me:

the first I used for a good night’s sleep,

the second that I would see another day)

to see her soon, is about to be

but poor poetic dust that covers all. 

The crows remind me that’s not 

all I want to say (their song may not be 

pretty, but they are wise). 

I cough and tell them to stop 

their cawing or go away.  They say they will

if the twenty-first line of this not a song

says it all. I miss you. And still they caw.