for Dennis Kim, 1983-2005
If your notebook packed into a knapsack tumbles
into the current of a river some October night
If this notebook’s marbled face reminds you of home, a hand-
drawn map of tectonic plates, a silt-soaked dock’s attendant moss
If the words within have ever saved you If they liken love
to glacial melts, the tides’ claw against rocks
If they liken faith to waterwings
And because the river is the Hudson, flecked with sirens Because it chews
at the starboard cheek of tugboats and spits at ferries which pass
Because you think poems are breaths that hands reclaim Because you wish one day
to speak in tongues Because she should hear you read for her
Because odes are now also elegies Because we cannot know what wake our living leaves
Because this confluence of muscle and loss Because they float just 10 yards out
Because you leap the pier’s railing headfirst