for Judy

This poem is not about death;
there are too many of those.
It is about everything else:
the long discussions of when
we were seven or twenty-two;
how we fancied being “great writers”
(both of us, even then);
how we were otherwise unalike,
you protesting in the streets,
me watching,
you flirting with any and all
who would flirt back,
me blushing,
you with the wild hair and umber eyes.

It is about anything but now;
anything but the slow fading,
anything but the white lilies
that will cover you before
the next hint of frost on the meadow.

©Janet Lynn Davis

—First published in Loch Raven Review, 2005.

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