Calm fragranted air
How in all this stillness, this splendor
could grief be so great?
I’ve paced the floors of my mind
I am visited by old friends
Will you see them there?
I pictured trees and forest and motion
Are you a circle?
Was the shade you cast so broad it stunted the growth of others?
From time to time I wonder
What is to be learned from this
Death
Begs the question
I’m to write A SAMIKA
Seven lines with sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, ending with a couplet on how I feel.
A direction like so many I cannot follow
How does one duplicate brilliance?
The words you so eloquently wrote in A SAMIKA
Holding you one of six* —
to your final resting place
to decay on the love of your life
Did you die of a broken heart?
The ritual seems so ordinary
© B.Michael Hunter 1994
*Reference to other Black Gay male writers who died relatively close together in the early 90s: Craig G. Harris (1991), Donald W. Woods (1992), Roy Gonsalves (1993), and Marlon Riggs (1994).