I loved you the first time I saw you
And I always will love you, Marie
—Randy Newman, “Marie”

(for Rose)

I can feel the slide into the booth
in a restaurant in a building
no longer there where
my poet friend Marie and I
would sit and eat and talk,

the time she said, a bit shyly,
“I’m in love,” and my eyebrows
lifted, and before I could ask,
she said, “You may know her,”
and my poet friend blushed,
closer than anyone knew
to the end,

but she and her Rose loved
with such fierce sweetness
in the time that was left that
every time she talked about
her Rose, I saw her thinning,
brittle self soften.

And not many years later when
I came to the house to deliver
the first copy of her book of
poems, the two of them sat
together on the sofa, holding
the slender volume with such
reverence,

Marie, who could barely see,
much less read, by then,
Rose and I blinking hard,
before we two realized that
Marie’s final gift to each of us
before she vanished
was us.

And now Rose and I meet for
dinners, friends who talk and laugh
and, without fail, speak of her
at least once—

we always will love you, Marie—

and when we hug goodbye
in the parking lot,
we’re hugging her, too,
grateful for her, thanking her
for the gift.

Chris Thile sings “Marie,” one of my favorite renditions: