BY Roger Barbee

                                                                        A Life

            All left of our boyhood friendship

            is this folded obituary clipped from the newspaper.

            It tells of your thirty-three years in the mill,

            memberships in a lodge and Baptist church,

            and it list names of immediate family.

            Not mentioned are

            our long bicycle rides to Coddle Creek

            taken to escape summer heat

            under its canopy of wet green           

            wading through the water and day;

            nor does it mention

            those early Sunday mornings

            when we sped through dark, town streets

            racing to circles of yellow light

            as you helped me deliver papers

            to sleeping customers;

            or the way you would appear at our door,

            a wrinkled shirt flung over one shoulder

            asking for a sister and iron

            because your masculine house had neither.

            It states your given name that we ignored

            in favor of your favorite wrestler’s,

            and it gives your dates on earth,

            but omits that you were left handed,

            had a lop-sided grin of a thousand suns,

            and your pearl to the world-a kind spirit.

            After all, it is only a piece of newsprint,

            not a life,

            like yours.

            For William Query, whom we called Moto