The Day I Won'T Eat Hot Dogs Poem by Patti Masterman

Perhaps oddly, I think of you the most on this day,
The day we ate hot dogs, holed up away from the world,
Just the two of us; nobody else liked hotdogs.
It was our proximate communion, in the midst of the summer.
We didn't have to fire up the grill, since it was only us.

After my childhoods splendors and rages ended, we grew even closer.
It is not that I took you for granted, but that I had never known
The absence of you in my life, and after it happened
Many things couldn't be the same again.
That we never know what we are losing till it's gone
Is a cliche, that is unhappily true-
Though maybe it is only that we lack imagination or guts to attempt it.

So now, on this day alone, I will never eat hot dogs.
But I can eat them on any other day, if the fancy strikes me.
It would be heresy to have communion when you are not here,
And although I still talk to you, it's all one-sided now.

But if I listen carefully, and make no noise or movement,
I can often hear the unfinished remembrance
Of what you would have said, on any occasion,
Or in answer to any statement; and in that way
You are always with me, in some fashion.

That is all I could really ask for. I would add, that because
You were one of the bravest persons I ever knew,
If in old age I have become like you in any small degree,
That should be enough of a parting gift, I think.

Sometimes I am alone, but whenever I think of you again,
I am never lonely. I thought that I knew you well, but now I think
That you were so much more, than human eyes could have revealed.

July 4th 2012