Kevin McCarthy wrote this poem.

Best Man
(for Dale Miller)
By Kevin McCarthy

We skied to a hot spring, and there was a great, simple rhythm to it:
shush, shush, shush, shush, shush and silence when we stopped and
puffs of vapor when we laughed, which was often

Then the steaming nexus and those eccentric caretaker brothers who
went on about moose and Nietzsche and the rigors of winter in their
microscopic cabin–the remoteness of a people-filter, they said

We felt it keenly, sunnyside up in the warm pool, heads resting on
the top step, waving arms, watching fat flakes spin from stars to
roiling vapor

It seemed we could make spirit jumps to a steady pulse of essence–
you felt it too, the way you spoke easily of cosmic consciousness
and knew when to shut the hell up

We shared a house and you civilized me, taught me about cooking
and gardens and how to be at ease with women, who always fell
in love with you and your olive skin, laser eyes

We all laughed at your patient exactitude, but none more than you,
beaming away in your patched jeans and crisp, lumberjack shirts–
those two years were richer than decades

I wish I’d saved even one of your droll refrigerator notes, like
the one composed of cascading redundancies and signed “Dale Dale”–
I can see the neat script, your elvish smile

It all endures. The buggy night we stood in thick smoke and were
joined by a desperate moose. The rainforest trek, when you saved my
sorry, Rocky Mountain ass with blueberries and cheer

You sought and rescued common treasure, feeding a talent of remaking,
your dark limbs, sober brow a lesson in focus–and in the evenings
we’d project and geogrify, waving arms

We built a cedar home on Courageous, my old truck, and between crisp
breaths I worried that Patricia would love you more than as a
brother–you were so clearly the best man

That fall, you were categorically the Best Man, driving a thousand
miles to anchor our alpine ceremony–another trim launch you aimed
moonward–and to loll in vapor, waving arms

Some of you I got secondhand–soccer heroics, stream salvation, the
endless fuss of fatherhood–but it was always clear how well you
do these things–remaking in iterative grace

You are the Best Man, and cannot stay. This blots the sky. We are
left to recite mere joy and plumb the great, simple rhythms of
shush, stream, soccer, father, dark limbs and laser eyes