A Poem For Chris Toll by Richard Sober

for Chris Toll

An almost visible thin gray line
separates us. Sleep is more and less
what it is made out to be.
Sleep is the bed where we misplace
our words. It is the night
we forget to wake up.
A clown with a bomb
stands behind us the moment before
we invent a new letter. A wave goodbye
on the alien space station
where you are dressed like a boy
inside an ancient mind.
Your eyes are weighed down with the stones
of your serious solitude.
The ones with all the words
inside them, the ones where
the angry tones of prophets
always return to the people,
whoever they are.
You, too, are missing in action.
For you love is not somethiing to do.
It is somewhere to be.
Open all the time.

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Richard Sober is a wise, noble poet and painter who worked in the trenches of Baltimore next to comrade Toll in the '70s and '80s when Baltimore was at its wildest and woolliest. He now resides in Austin, but currently has a wonderful show of his paintings - which he drove here in a van across country - called "Borrowed Earth on exhibition at the Creative Alliance. Please go to see them and your heart will sing. http://www.creativealliance.org/events/2014/richard-sober-borrowed-earth