Dear All – Vandal Poem of the Day

You whose memory comes to me winter afternoons as the soon gone sun

falls low and thin

You whom I knew long and well

You I knew but slightly, knew not well but cared to,

had there been place enough and time

You who have come to hate me now

You who are the trees out the window to me, the shallow-rooted I have

always loved

I greet you in my unsent letters, in both my random and my steady thoughts

You whom I failed to thank and you I failed to turn to

You I have tried and tried to speak with and have not been able to cross

those seas

You I fought with in the snow in unsatisfactory shoes, marching up and down,

shouting at each other, so hot we were, so cold, the drifts deepening

You I let down and you I picked up by the highway

You who have made a name for yourself

You who were called away and never came back,

you who would not leave

You I worked with as we had never worked before, side by side

in the studio with five windows glazed by yellow light

You I no longer know but fear dead—

drugs, car wrecks, the several wars,

the usual deaths of my generation—

And you who have gone the distance, beyond your disappointments,

your cancers and their dire cures, my friends

I send you this letter, from the landscape of our years together

You must not wonder if I think of you still—

I have remained steadfast here

I have remembered you wholly into this day