MY SENIOR YEAR

The vicious, blameless, universe
killed two high school girls
in my class in 1971.
Betty Wong was smart and sweet,
taken by leukemia.
Susan Thompson, promising poet,
by suicide.
Tonight, forty years later, I think of them.
They would never go on
to the new possibilities women would have.
No college, career, marriage, family.
All that was left
were some good people
crying in the night.

copyright 2011 David Elsey

A WOMAN

She told me she was 89
and had cancer.
She told me she had been a nurse
in World War Two,
near the front.
And I thought
when all the chips were in the pot
she made a difference.
She told me she came back
and taught school for 44 years.
What a joke she must have thought:
I save the world
and come home and teach English.
She didn't whine,
there was only a courage
I pray someday to match.

Copyright 2010 David Elsey

ATTACKS

My friends are under attack.
Denise has cancer
and is fighting for her life.
Maggie is on oxygen
twenty-four hours a day.
Gus filed for bankruptcy
and split with his woman of sixteen years
in the same week.
And I have troubles
which I will not go into.

Copyright 2010 David Elsey

TO JOHN CALLAHAN--AMERICAN CARTOONIST AND MUSICIAN

The day after I heard you were dead
I walked down NW 23rd
knowing it would never be the same.
Never again would I see
that patch of red hair down the street,
knowing when I got to you
I could chat with a brilliant, gracious, gutsy man.
Now I must look for the next fresh face
that can bring back that magic,
never quite the same,
but magic nonetheless,
a face much like yours
when I met you 26 years ago.

Copyright 2010 David Elsey

TO MY FATHER

Father, where are you?
I needed you to be a kiss on the cheek,
an image to grow into,
a guide clearing the way into life,
and to name the birds darting through our yard.
You gave me an emptiness I carry like a scar,
an emptiness where you should reside.
You spared me your weakness
and the pain you would have given.
I am free from your image and demands,
and that freedom is dust
lifted by the wind
and scattered.
I was something you did not want or need,
an event, a mistake, early in your life.
And you went on like nothing happened
and there were no witnesses.


Copyright 1997 David Elsey

UPSTAIRS AT RINGLER'S

Upstairs at Ringler's
the world was not a nightmare.
Every other Saturday
we library employees
would meet for drinks.
Good booze, good talk, good jokes.
A sense of shared suffering
was overcome again and again.
Of course I knew it would end.
But I wanted it to go on forever.
It was what I needed as the days raced by.
Now, as the days draw down,
I search elsewhere for what we were.


Copyright 2009 David Elsey

FOR DYLAN

A gifted poet
has written a beautiful poem
dedicated to me.
I am blessed by his talent,
he is blessed by his talent,
by God
or the random universe,
a miracle really.
All because I sent him
a short note wishing wellness,
it is amazing
what a few words can do.


Copyright 2008 David Elsey