Dispatch #122

Last poem of the year!

The Last Poem


It is enough 
to be nothing,
porous
to what appears.
It is enough 

to sit on a bench
and watch a contrail
dissolve into dust, 
to make a day of it.

It is enough 
to look
in order to see,
and to know
the difference. 

It is enough
to walk myself awake 
in sub-zero wind,

snow-blind 
and heartbroken.
It is enough 
to forget. 

It is enough
to borrow 
from the dead
a voice 

to sing through,
to survive the season.

It is enough,
the poems cramped 
in the margins 
of a water-stained
notebook—

leave them there
to be revised
by time. 

It is enough—

alone 
at the end of the year 
engulfed by a presence 
I am not compelled to name.