By Richard LeDue
The voices from my youth,
which I believed would never change,
nor sink in the silence
deeper than words one calls a poem,
are gone now,
dispelled like doubt
that keeps a person from saying words
beyond a polite hello,
and the cricket songs from past summer nights
make poor metaphors for timelessness,
even if eight hours of sleep finds solace
in dreams I'm so used to
being forgotten, that my greying hair
becomes a fading funeral dress
that doesn't need to say anything
to tell me what I don't want to know.
Richard LeDue (he/him) lives and teaches in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He has been published both online and in print. He is the author of ten books of poetry. His latest book, “Sometimes, It Isn’t Much,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in February 2024.
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