It isn’t often I see someone in that little country graveyard
on Potrero Valley Road, but this morning as I drove past,
two women, each clutching a bouquet of flowers, were walking
toward a polished granite headstone in that solemn
& deliberate way that people walk when visiting their dead.
An hour earlier you’d left for Minneapolis. Your folks,
in their mid-eighties now, are clearly failing. When you get in,
they’ll fuss & laugh: perhaps the last time in this world you’ll
ever see them. I think of that baronial Jewish cemetery back
in New Jersey where my parents are laid to rest. For a moment,
driving through the Barrett Hills, I long to be there, kneeling
where they lie, to kiss their graves &, weeping, tell them that I—
well, you know the stuff that people always say, as if the dead
were lying there awake & listening. Dearest, I already miss you.
For a week I’ll try to stop complaining—though it’s my nature—
& make do: I’ll pour birdseed in the feeders for the finches
& grosbeaks & jays, remembering how vulnerable all of us are
& how briefly everything exists. I’ll feed our furry little
sweethearts & make certain Wally has his final dose of Baytril
& take Jesse for his walks—that slow, difficult circle he makes
these days around our modest property—& hide his Tramadol
& Chondroflex in glops of cream cheese, per your instructions,
& as I promised, every second day I’ll water the tomatoes & the
jasmine & the bougainvillea & roses & ice plant & the crape myrtle.

—From Cherish, Steve Kowit’s final collection of poems (University of Tampa Press, October 2015); appears here by permission of Mary Kowit and the publisher