In Memoriam: Reginald Shepherd 1963 - 2008

Reginald Shepherd died Wednesday night after a year-long struggle with cancer.
His blog.

"A Handful of Sand"

I'm always putting thing in poems

where I think they'll keep, lying

to the lying gods to make a way

out of whatever ways I have.

The rooms we wander through

on a day of no significance

are white, are beige, are gray, nothing

of any importance will happen

today.  A fake fragment of Greek frieze

frames three plaster women in pleated chitons

sitting on a bus, or so it looks

from here, a krater holds a plastic plant

(saw palmetto, perhaps) that's following

them, but they don't seem to be

moved.  Graffiti on the men's room stall

reads "TEXT," reads "SIGN,"

and also the word "DEUCE"

scratched into green-painted metal.

Think of all the blunder and fault

in the world, a noisy lexicon

of mistake, hoots, jargles, squawks,

and rasps, think of all the bending

and breaking of oak boughs.

Think of the quartz beach wrecked

by recent hurricanes, driftwood

and seaweed beginning to stink,

plastic cup lids I mistook for shells.

(We have seen the wind

by what it leaves behind, its wreckage

and detritus, but the water

won't be wounded.)

File this pearl-smooth conch interior

under no, press it against your ear

as if it were the spirit radio,

and you were walking down the street

tuned to just one voice, wading

waist-high through shallow light.

The minutes continue their shine, the shapes

of color change and turn; a wind

blows through my skin

and you renew the weather.

I will not entirely die.

(from Fata Morgana, Reginald Shepherd, 

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)