Thomas Locicero’s most recent poem to appear here was “Alaska” (June 2017)

For Jeff Buckley
By Thomas Locicero

In a slack water channel, still and unstressed,
in Wolf Creek Harbor, you stepped in fully dressed.
Motionless, each way, in the tidal stream,
but nothing is ever as it would seem.
The absence of flow meant an easier swim.
Except for a roadie, no one was with him.
The roadie, Keith Foti, turned away to take
a radio out of the reach of the wake
of a tugboat, also grabbing a guitar,
and, turning back, could no longer see the star.
With a backdrop of Memphis, Tennessee,
a soft current ran to the Mississippi.
As if in quiet mourning, the water flowed
while throughout Heaven, “Hallelujah” echoed.