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Haiku Free Verse Prosies
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For Elsa
He did not die there.
He died there, but did not die there.
Before he died, he reached through the walls of the prison
and made sure his will would speak
from beyond the grave.
I saw the place where he died.
I did not see that place.
Men build places like it every day, to kill their brothers.
But the deaths are slow, they take years,
from cradle to grave,
from cockroach to asthma,
from wonder bread to robberies,
from schoolroom to precinct,
they die a little every day, and at the end
no one person can be blamed.
He wanted his ashes to float in a place without walls, where snow
never touched the ground, where the ocean
never turns a steel grey eye to the sky,
where the blue ocean surrounds the land and its people,
its noble people, its borinquen.
This was not the place where he died.
I did not see him die.
You went to collect him. You flew
to the island, you got in the boat,
its bright colors, you and all his people.
You were singing when you set him free.
But I, still alive and far away, where the sky
turns a cold grey eye to the earth,
I was sinning myself free from you and all your people
and there is no way for you to understand.
— Frances Donovan
July 1, 2004
August 5, 2004
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