ODE TO JIM

I’m up late again

It’s not quite the wee hours, but it will be soon

Jim used to say there were fewer people

“sucking up the ether”

So it was the time for creators to create

Writers to write

Painters to paint

Composers to compose

Jim’s not here to see this modest magazine

But I know he would encourage me

He was a true thinker, questioner, expresser

Turns of phrase that clicked together

Like ancient bricks in fresh mortar

Stringing words together like Christmas lights untangling

Effortless blinking in a pre-ordained rhythym

Those were the conversations we could have

Cami and Max and Jim and I

Just a handful in years

And the times in between like a bulb missing

And then we would light right back up again

When the kids were bigger and then grown

When I think of the ether

I think of Jim

And now he Is the ether

And I think it’s just one of the long stretch of months

We haven’t seen each other

Gathered with John and Della and Frankie and Charlie

Family from a life before our life

We watched the little Sam and Lucie and Luke

Tended by their gardeners so

How it is that certain people

Are the ones you see the least

But would love to the most

And suddenly time is no more

If anyone believed he’d still be here

In energy

It would be Jim

And so I am here in the ether

Tonight

Knowing this is where I might find him

~AKS 12/12/23