I recently lost a friend of mine – at the same time that a few other people I know also lost people close to them.
For this week’s post, I thought I’d offer a poem by the great Bert Meyers.
Though about a specific person, I feel the sentiment speaks for many.
For W.R. Rodgers – Bert Meyers
I knew a candle of a man
whose voice, meandering in a flame,
could make the shadows on the wall
listen to what he said.
Time flowed from a vein that ran
its blue crack through his pale forehead.
He’s done. You’d need a broom
to arouse him now.
All things burn before they’re dead.
Some men are words that warmed a room.
José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and the author of seven chapbooks as well as the collections Everything We Think We Hear, Small Fires, Until We Are Level Again, and, most recently, An Empty Pot’s Darkness. His poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Prairie Schooner, New South, Poetry International, and The Bind. Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, he runs the poetry blog The Friday Influence and composes erasure poems on the Instagram account @poetryamano. He is also a faculty member in Pine Manor College’s Solstice Low-Residency MFA program. With an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, José is an Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston where he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander Magazine.
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2 thoughts on “* paying tribute via Bert Meyers”
“Some men are words that warmed a room.” What a beautiful description of someone. A lovely poem.
“Some men are words that warmed a room.” What a beautiful description of someone. A lovely poem.
I agree! Thank you for reading!