Virginia Hamilton Adair

When someone leaves us, do we remember them or allow them to drift away?

Here’s a poem for your consideration by American poet Virginia Hamilton Adair (February 28, 1913 – September 16, 2004), who became famous later in life with the 1996 publication of Ants on the Melon at the age of 83.

Fair Warning

Parked in your battered Mustang
a little way into the woods,
we watched rain glisten on glass.
I asked if you had written to Leonard.
You said “No, when friends move away
they go out of my life.”
Earlier, in our ecstasy,
I thought: Even dying would be joy
if you leaned over me then
in that hour of passage,
your cool, talismanic fingers
touching my eyes shut.
Now, inexorable miles of highways,
tollbooths, drawbridges,
spun before my sight.
Shafts of gear and brake
came between our bodies.
I said “Thanks for the warning.”
But I loved you long after
our family moved a continent away,
felt your hands and words
come between me and the wheel,
driving alone at night
into treeless hills.
--Virginia Hamilton Adair
—from Rattle #7, Summer 1997