Frances 4 Poem by RIC BASTASA

one day i ask her about her life

what she's going to do now that she had fallen from grace

into poverty and all alone

her loved ones died in one sweeping car accident

on a freeway

she is silent for a while thinking perhaps that asking her

in the midst of her grief

would be to unkind from someone

but reconsiders the question

as i am one whom she considers a friend through and through


she opens her mouth and says

' i stopped analyzing, i stopped questioning'

and to all these and those

and those yet to come she says

yes, yes, yes, yes.