in memoriam Bill Knott
With the cold front
came news of your death—
a failed bypass—
and a skim of snow
that vanishes at the sun’s touch.
Soon, only shadows are white,
like the letters
I keep trying to form
as my pen runs out of ink.
Dave Bonta (bio) often suffers from imposter syndrome, but not in a bad way — more like some kind of flower-breathing dragon, pot-bellied and igneous. Be that as it may, all of his writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
For what it’s worth, that actually happened. My black ballpoint pen ran out of ink just as I was trying to draft this poem in my pocket notebook. Instead of the snow melts, I got the snow me.
I’m thinking Bill Knott would’ve had a much better idea what to do with that irony.
the snow me
fades; yet we
must chisel language