For MM ætat LXX anno MMVII

I still remember listening to music in your campus home,
the drive up to Munro, your flowing supply of tales,
your patient ignoring at my young poet's vain wails
at plain critique. Across the years my thoughts roam,
days wholly gone, vanished like the last sea-foam,
into pale nothingness. You write of the sharp nails
in Christ's hard hands, you work out the details
in tightest lines. An epigram says much more than a tome.
Your words reverberate with brightly living scenes,
with kindest regards, and yet each honestly chosen
in a brilliant flash, not one embroidered; simple, straight.
We see beneath, we know what each poem means,
we know that the moment has been held and frozen,
each word, each letter, bears its fullest weight.