A DEATH ON FACEBOOK

by Arne Weingart

 

 

Of course I would hear it here
first, or rather experience it

the way we now experience
the weather, the way detail

after detail accretes, providing
eventually a consensus of rain,

in spring, on an afternoon
sidewalk. We knew everything

about you, or so you seemed
to want us to think. We knew

about Bernie and the Pope
and Heidegger and dour,

underappreciated German poets
and your love of Russian soulfulness

and teaching and tacos. We saw
you juggle for your nieces.

You made me want to juggle, too,
if only for myself. What follows

now is not exactly silence but
rather static, a kind of vacant hum.

By quanta or bits or pixels, by any
messenger of the data toward

which we all finally aspire, go
now, Okla, energetically to your rest.

 

 

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