Elegy After the Death of a Cousin

It wasn't the fact that you died that I recognized
after hanging up the phone—it was the way my brother said it.
Nothing registered except quick annoyance and anger.

                                                                    Then it sank in:
that your father, wife, & fourteen year-old watched you die
at the hospital in Connecticut; that I was away in Chile, miles
from the tired faces of parents, relatives--from any reminder
that you had died at all.  And now, back again, I’m furious

at the vague but warm memories I have left:
your large, friendly body; your compass-like smile;
your laugh, like a big brass instrument—

ghosts left behind, and not even a wink of you.

for Steve