Poem appeared in California Quarterly
A Suicide
for Ryan Taylor (1971-1994), whose father said,
“He chose a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
Of that big-boned boy,
of Ryan lacrosse player,
I remember his running gait,
his loping signature way
of moving through air,
around occasional transitional
opponents,
and how the zoom lens of the game
would come to rest at the center of him,
as he would feint, stepping sure footed as a horse,
and break into gallop.
But we will never know
why his future was lost in the shotgun’s blast.
He was buried in the crowd’s noise,
and in the cheers and in the winning score.
His vacuum
left us outside ourselves,
his swift passage
like a wind in our lives.
