for Seamus Heaney 

 
a box of coconut water 
two cans of coconut milk 

so many looking for help 

some people care when a poet dies 

a poem is a conscience 
a report card, a confession: 

today my lies were a motor that spun the Earth 

how can you get truth from a hill 
when I am the continent that drifts? 

how can I taste what I’m mourning 
when soon everything will be salt from the sea? 

 
—8/30/13, Register 6 
          1 PM—5:15 p.m.

Copyright @ 2014 by Ali Liebegott. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on May 6, 2014.