To Jack

You and I
Because I found you by chance
In your pages
In the space between them
In your words
In your lack of dots
To late anyway

For a year I lived beside your grave
In Ashburnham
Next to Lowell I rested
And felt one of your forty seven
Flammable winters
As I chewed midnight tobacco
Just watching…
Ice cold caramelized stars

And when I feel blue
I just run and read
Under the half moon
Your
Mexico City Blues
Or your sorrowful diaries
From the fifties
To lift up my terrible spirit

I know I never met you
I know we won’t have a beer together
Or talk about the prostitutes we loved
The ones no one else cared about
Neither understood
But, I’m here for you
Committed with your loving vision
Of endless roads and holy bums

And the day I die
I hope to see you in that heaven
The one you were so concerned about
And introduce me to the little Gerard
As we laugh
Tossing with cheap wine and cigars
In a cloudy celestial alley
Lightened by a drunken moon

As the older brother I always wanted
The one I never had
The one I needed to teach me about this life
I still don’t know
I still don’t understand
As you never did
As you really tried

I want you to know that:

I’m glad you still here for me
In your pages
In the space between them
In your words
In your lack of dots
In the vast love I feel
For the man on the road

Carlos Dominguez Lloret, marzo 2008