STEVE KOWIT 'S VOICE
(1938-2015)

You made an hour's listening
to your urban Beat reading
sound easy no matter
it's how consequential
you ask for a clever
underground voice
to make our attention span
pass all unconventional words
yet you once called yourself
a trouble maker in temperament
or street wise young delinquent
who had so much tension
escaping Vietnam for Canada
defying the government
after a poet's vent and rant
you visit a secret zen peace garden
to observe a choice of leaves
when tossing and turning
sleepless in lemon and red
at Julian to the El Capitan's dam
flowing in a river bed
as blue fish swim beside you
finding in his imagination
even a mermaid or merman
in an expectant delivery
of California's inclement rain
for a life is never a fading thread
there is always a clever knot
somewhere in any deluged plant
that causes us to survive
any injectant life long pardon
remembering what you said
you made us wish to feel alive
willing to entertain
your departure is an absence
within October's rushing breeze
as we wade in your span
making eyes at the dancing moves
of you and partner Mary
move their hands and feet
from grit head to their knees
you showed us to be brave
from any contrary countenance
flowing from a spit image
of recognition and a language
writ to a connection
at your magnetic presence
just by sheer energy
in your main man up ignition
offering and all ready to go
and fully release your poetry
at a leaking lip of chance
never drowning
but going by the  implicit flow
in an innocent body of thoughts
with your unique way of language
yet dowsing for still waters
evidently listening
to sea star shells bobbing up
amid the Big Apple
traveling to Brighton Beach
to hear sea star shell echoes
hidden out by enlightened angels
with Whitman and Crane
and onto San Diego's
sunny Coronado
within reach of the white sand
by endless exits of parking lots
we remember you, Steve Kowit
engaged here to shelter
to enlighten us by an obit
for your own entwined memory
from my own signed elegy
you sought to be at peace.