The names of the recent or anniversary
dead bring back how he waved his hand
toward himself to signal you outside
at the party, then bent close, said,
“Sit. Tell me what really happened.”

Or when she leaned over the table:
“This is not what good cake really is,”
then told of cake back in Argentina so light,
you could eat a slice twice this big and still
go out dancing afterwards, and in heels.

Or when he called for no reason on a bad day
to say, “Hey, Pal, I was just thinking of you”
exactly when you stepped on a small thumbtack
of remorse and couldn’t find a way to stop the hurt.

This October, and all the other months too,
we name them each Friday night, the list lengthening
each year in inverse proportion to who’s still here.

Now, a new name, an old face who used to be
on Zoom with us in our pandemic homes,
his full lips dancing with the beat,
muted with his eyes closing, but still singing.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; and The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Terrain, Half and One, Poets & Writers, Negative Capability, The New Territory, Louisville Review, New Letters, and dozens of other journals.