Recently I found out that an old friend passed away. We were close friends all through college, but eventually lost touch because I moved away. I couldn't believe that a friend could die and I wouldn't know about it or sense it. The news of his death arrived a year after the fact. This is one of many poems I wrote to deal with my own grief.

When I find out you have died
I die a little too,
a gasp escapes, a squall of grief.
For weeks

I contemplate June
one year before.
How could I not have sensed
your departure?

That was the day I arrived
at my island sanctuary
of sand and oat grass,
maritime forest and ocean.

Was there a moment, a notion
as I rocked back and forth
upon the front porch that evening,
reading, pondering, or humming

When a yellow bird perched
itself upon a twisted oak tree's branch
perched and stared at me, whistled
its dirge song into the ocean breeze.

Or, perhaps an anole
quietly darted
across the deck, taking with him
his subtle motion-coded message.

Where were my muses then?

There was just this -
the splash
of one more wave crashing
and foaming upon the sand.

The high-pitched call from
a sea bird's mouth,
saltwater pulling a handful
of sandy grains back

Into the boundless ocean, that lost wave
ever so slightly changing the shape
of the sandy beach, so subtle that shift
that no one noticed it, not even me.

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