We never met, but spoke only a few times on the phone. Three gifts you sent me: a headshot photo of you from your theater days, a volume of Billy Collins poetry, another I’ve forgotten.
How I discovered you passed
an inadvertant admission
via email
my throat clenching
on what might-have-been
Oh, but do I come here now to praise or bury you? What can I say?
your artistic eye
your love of haiku
and photography
your fire to face and scorch
to ashes your adversaries
All this. & then your greatest to me…
unwed mother
yet bearing the child
you gave away
You’re gone now. I left unreturned your final message. We shared only a faint connection. Did you lack the heart for contact after a lifetime without? Is that why I let you go?
still I live this life
your sacrifice made possible
moving on
as somewhere your art and you
lay at rest
At dVerse Poets MTB, pubtended by Laura, we lament without the lachrymose. I wrote my Jisei-adapted elegy for my birth mother.
The pub is still open! Come join us!
Frank J. Tassone 
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