The Death of Richard Hugo

   by Phillip Peters

I don’t think he died because he
ran out of things to say.
I think he died because 
he had left so much unsaid.
Pieces of him had been chipped off
over his hard years until what remained
crumpled under its own weight, 
reduced to a pile of stones, cold and alone
lost in his empty churches and derelicts
forlorn graveyards separated from the living,
listening to the wind speak silence to him,
swallowing the salmon’s caviar.
Now this pile, still full of stories 
and places only he could visit,
slowly abrades into dust and the
black wind carries him back to his words.