85. Nobody Wants to Write An Elegy
You would do anything to avoid that
You just want one more day with dad
Watching Turner Classics together
Talking about the old days
Talking about Canada
Talking about the Union Pacific Railroad
Talking about being broke and on the road with the band
Talking about mother
Gone almost ten years
He still misses her
“I would be so glad if she
Just walked through that door, son”
The next movie
Brings him back to his early
Teens when he was an usher
In one of those grand movie palaces
In Calgary
He begins to gets away from me
Walking toward the screen
In his majestic
Almost military uniform
He disappears from the
Room
He is gone
Nobody wants to write an elegy
You would do anything to avoid that
Everybody wants just one more day
– William J. Harris
William J. Harris has published two books of poems, Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment and In My Own Dark Way, a chapbook, “Domande Personali/Personal Questions” and individual poems in more than fifty anthologies of poetry. Currently he is interim Director of the MFA in the KU English Department.
