Good Fridays 1989-2022/On the Death of a Friend

Spring must be preceded by a period
of mourning, as though death was
the beginning, rather than the bloom
from bullets, the sapling from seed.
Consider our history had we had
commenced below the equator,
all the regular harbingers cast off
like sackcloth, or snipped fabric
pinned to my mother’s breast when
she was orphaned; or the rending of leaf.
Then we might have come to a truer
appreciation of martyrdom, what was
requisite, and extraneous to the change
of the seasons. In the time it took to create
a savior, I travel back either to this day
or its approximations, or perhaps I am
merely upside down, inside out, depending
on your angle or standard of judgment—
what you would never do in my place,
what I did, in spades–to the greatest
Good Friday on record, and one meal
that was infinite, though it really was
the drinks that shamelessly drizzled
on into perpetuity. Liquids that suggested
gemstones in their lustrous curves
and postures, sapphire in his glass;
in mine, unplaceable tourmaline. I
am trying only to retrieve something
certain and permanent from what
was so poorly rehearsed. The losses
of this day pile on like so many grains
of a larger creation, a winsome regret
I am not capable of, yet I know it’s out
there, in religions I have rejected.
When I am finished, I hope to be left
in a wilderness, where the astute
and quiescent will make a festival
of my decay; from my body,
a feast.