This is maybe one in sort of the same spirit.
This poem was written in response
to a pullout quote in the University
of Washington Daily, which is the campus newspaper up
in Seattle.
A terrible thing had just happened.
A kid had fallen off of a third story balcony and died.
And I just thought the quote in the paper
was unintentionally comic.
And I wanted to rescue the situation from the quote,
as much as a poem is ever going to be able to do that.
The epigraph from the UW Daily goes,
'"I just don't want everyone to remember him as the guy who
fell off the balcony.
He was so much more to us."
That seemed wrong.
So, anyway.
This poem is called, "Four Things More".
"Say he sent gingerbread to the criminally forlorn.
Say he left too soon like Thomas Chatterton.
Say he brokered a truce between the buckthorn
and the peppercorn.
Say he was loved.
He must have been."