A lot of great poems here I'm passing by.
So I think I'll end with this final poem called "Missing."
I try to extend the notion of "Extra Room" to the dead.
"If I told you simply that the bed in the Baptist hospital
last occupied by Cora Stokes is empty again
and the patient didn't go home, you'd
be likely not to feel much interest.
So I'm adding here the news that she's
gone missing, that any tip on her whereabouts
will be highly prized.
Cora Stokes-- female, African-American, 47,
5 feet 5 inches, slender with a mole on her chin
and a small scar over her right eyebrow.
Last seen the day before yesterday in the cardiac wing
by a night nurse who didn't like the looks of her chart.
Till a week ago, a teacher of botany at Jefferson
Junior high in Chesterfield.
On Wednesday nights, a player of bridge with three women
she's known since grade school.
Left-handed, slaps her head with her left hand
when she makes a mistake in bidding made by beginners.
Owner of a bungalow on Cherry Street, three bedrooms.
One occupied by her mother, Bessie, 76,
crippled by arthritis.
One by her daughter, Trish, 11, a fifth grader
at Holy Angels no Baptist school nearby being available.
Single mother, observed by neighbors
on weekends working with daughter in vegetable garden
while mother looks on from a Canvas chair.
Observed on Sundays driving the pair to second Baptist
on Randolph street.
Believes that her God sees everything.
Not sure what he does with the information.
An abstainer from alcohol for 11 years,
except for the break after the operation when
a lump in her right breast was removed.
Moviegoer with a preference for a heavy domestic drama.
Three handkerchief features that serve
to keep her heart soft and flexible.
Worried she has no room in her heart
for two backbiting colleagues, two teachers she'd
assign some serious time in purgatory if she were Catholic.
Reader of the personal columns in the star.
Confident she'll be happier when she swears off men and doesn't
relent as she did the last time.
Lover of swing band music.
Owner of a canary she gives a run of the house.
An hour at dusk, the time of day that for her
seems least confining, most open to possibility to change.
If your life seems closed to the possibility
of lasting significance, I guarantee it will change.
If any information you offer leads
at last to her being found."
Thank you.