SAFE TO SAY

SAFE TO SAY

I could write
a million poems about you

but who would want
to read them?
who
would care?

not even the patron saint
of lost causes
has time for this
brand of hopeless reiteration

no one in their right mind
will bear with me
when I tell them
everything about you
to which
I gave insane meaning
upon which I place such
crazed value

want to know
what supposed, expected love
crippled me
love that is just
a cruel gaslit
shadow
of itself

and the delirium in which
I felt so close but then
wasn’t but
maybe
was in retrospect,
in the final analysis

a ghost of a hope
a chimera

and yet
over the years

we still talking
reminding, remembering

looking back from
incredible distance, lives
that went
totally separate ways

and now at long last
the peace
the silence

closure I am sure, I suppose
far as I can tell,
seems safe to say

could have written
a million poems about you

most, all
of them

closing exactly
this same way.