Elegy’s

almost eulogy, is nearly dearly
beloved, I am ungathered here
where you are not, I confess
I obsess, repeat myself to feel
this speaking’s more than the creaking
of a pew in an empty church, where
as a tyke, surrounded by an absence
I was priestly asked to think of
as love, I couldn’t wrap my mind
round such a zilch, whereas you
I touch and smell in the rough flesh