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Picking "Loquitur" up the other day, my Quaker friend's photo & a draft
of this fell out.  Fine-tuned some vowels, removed some excess.  I
assume I wrote it in '95.

	Doorways.

	i.m. 1990-1985

		'unde laoquaces lymphae desiliunt tuae'

	i.*

	Stands in the door's archway,
	peers, grinning
	into a lens of sunlight,
	leans firmly on his cane:
	look of a man,
	life's work almost done,
	battling regret
	for what was not got down; a man yet
	apprenticed to waiting.

	
	ii.

	Plain tombstone another doorway:
	where hoped-for last sonata's syllables
	flickered out in grass.
	The ten-year weathered stone
	in my friend's photo,
	bears only name and dates;
	his attendance at Meeting,
	a lifetime's silent
	integrity intact.

			*Derek Smith's photo in Conjunctions 8.

Pete.


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