for Vance (June 27, 1952-January 7, 2024)
There was the ending of school
in springtime, the flurry and flutter
of finishings. Did you get your picture
into the yearbook? Did you collect
signatures from your closest friends,
receive their well wishes? You moved
into the rest of your life. It was not
the end, but one of the many endings
you learned to absorb.
The boy you were
with back then—the one who skipped
the graduation ceremony, you attended
but have no memory fifty plus years
later—he became a friend till he died,
a shock he’s gone. Such a historical
figure in your life. Carefree days
of togetherness—living in sin in the 70s
forging through newness, adulthood.
A fiancé,
an engagement never meant to become
a marriage, the car you bought instead—
something safer, and as expensive.
You made him a ring with that diamond,
kept the empty white gold simple setting
you’d picked one hopeful day.
You went off to live in the city, he chose
to stay behind in Queens. The assumption,
you would remain friends forever,
and you did.
But now the end of who you once
were is final. Passed away he will
have no more springs with his wife.
His exit an end to a past that haunts
as years turn. His voice echoes
through time and place, a reminder
of someone you used to be. What new
starts hold you here steady, the pages
turning, those school days
far gone.
A flurry and fluttering in your future
for your final day, yet to come.
Julene Tripp Weaver's Slow Now with Clear Skies was released this year from MoonPath Press. Her third poetry book, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, won the Bisexual Book Award, four Human Relations Indie Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her work is widely published and anthologized.
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