On The Death of Al Purdy

Old black and white photos
with cigar in hand
seem like crime scene pictures
one stares at, waiting
for their unconscious to scream
the answer to a mystery
we desperately need to solve.

Each breath probably was
like chasing after a shadow
we want to believe
means more than something scientific
happening between night and day.

The assisted suicide revealed
years later,
as if a sort of postmortem defiance
against a lung cancer
that turned sitting up in bed
into a long walk
to somewhere no one wants to go.

His poems left behind
to remind us there should be more
to life than how we die,
even if silence waits for us
to be born,
knowing we’ll waste most of our words.