When I wrote about you yesterday, I had no idea you’d slipped away.
Such a thing doesn’t even seem possible to me.
You’re always there.
You are all over my novel.
Including its dedication, which I usually write last.
But this time I wrote it first because this was in so many ways your book. OUR book.
Some things are just too hard to comprehend.
Of all the songs I could have thought about when I woke up today, this is the lyric that was on the pillow next to me.
It made me smile, and you’d know why.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
Well I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
I love you. The only reason I can write or think or breathe right now is that I know you knew that.
Normally, I’d never put something this private here. But your absence deserves to be noted. The world will never be better for losing a poet, and I will never be better for losing a friend.
But you were here and I got to know you and be loved by you and love you. Thank you.
John Riley Morris
March 8, 1955 to January 16, 2008
January 20, 2008
October 14, 2007
December 27, 2006
June 24, 2006
December 8, 2005
September 30, 2005