Writing Poems, Books, Biographies To Remember Us By: Does Anyone Really Care About Us? Poem by Dennis Ryan

Tuesday morning, May 1, 2012; revised Wednesday morning, May 2, 2012; Tuesday morning, February 21, 2023 at 7: 13 a.m.

'We think it's important what we do: it will last
and a story's expected of us. With a great world
wondrous outside us, our interest instead is to leave
on the shelf as we go out, a biography
we hope an insightful mirror will have written down.
- William Bronk, 'The Immortals', from The Cage of Age

We think its important writing books—
they are as we are as we write them.
We experience something in ourselves,
carry it with us and it gets expressed.

A friend while living never asked,
and sent me each new book of his.
He just signed and sent them. Since
he has died, I rarely pick them up:

he had been like a brother to me,
more than, and I know how he felt
about this life, and am still mourning:
I look at his books sitting on the shelf.

Yesterday, I started to reread them because
someone else is dying far away, in Indiana.
I don't know her very well, and I don't want
this poem to sound uncaring; it seeks some

sort of communion in a world where
almost none exists. We need look far, afar—
in rare instances, there are telling exceptions.
The kindnesses and care are out there

somewhere, and we need look for them
as they look for, search for us in time.
The woman dying—I think I have met
her, or someone like her this past week.