We I Us

By: Jack Buck

in an attempt to show what’s challenging to translate
I watch nature planet earth documentaries to better
prepare for death and what’s ahead for us

(when financial inheritance is generational
sitting on the sidelines is the embodiment of
an effort to protect a recognizable pattern)

today like the birds we’ve left and gone away before
leaving all of that behind our previous selves lost by
indecision in timing to join in the sum of efforts

(aloha family and friends
when you die some of me will die
while simultaneously you will continue
living on through me or
maybe it will be me continuing
by the way of you)

I’ll think about that right now
to better live my life

(one of my friends points out how poets
keep bringing up birds to explain things
that’s perfectly fine
the more birds the better)

look over there now it’s winter
it’s snowing let’s go outside in our
winter coats and sit in the summer lawn chairs
to read your book of poems to keep us warm
this is us happily on fire

(just like you I’m obsessed with art
can you blame us)
it’s suddenly spring again
and I’m in the sun
leaned against a wall
a shadow of you and me

(companion planting is defined as
inter-planting of two or more crops that
will benefit from being near
similar to that intention I write
all of us into a photopoem)

a meditation where words of language
grow silent to not get in the way
its title: a continuous combat against division
the preface: a prayer book of
poem lines setting out together making our way

(where does it begin
was it then
what about now
it is now)

almost like a mellowing out
that nobody has to pretend any longer
humming along tiptoeing around
the subjects at dinner parties
its consequence a tremendous reassurance
of who you are

(you write your name on the wall
with the rest and look at the sky
endlessly outstretched towards God)

there’s a self-made myth that claims
it’s of the heroic individual
I disagree
it was always our collective effort