Jack of Diamonds (in memory of Jack Couchard)

What legacies do we leave behind?
Am I to believe that all those who’ve gone before
Have been relegated to the status of
A faint rustle in the wind
A cricket chirping in the dark
Or a thin corona around the midnight moon?

And how can you tell me that Jack is gone-
My old friend Jack
Whose jovial face I still see
Whose familiar shtick still makes me laugh
Whose second hand cigarette smoke
Still lingers fondly in my nostrils?
How can you compress 81 years of joy and pain
Of success and failure
Of sheer excellence and mere mediocrity
Into a rectangular slab of marble
And call it a monument?

Some holes can not be filled with dirt.
You can’t cover up a lifetime with six feet of peat moss and say it’s gone.
Your can’t bury a lifetime of inspiration and aspiration.
No one can tell me that Jack’s buried.
Jack’s not buried.

I don’t believe that he’ll never walk through that door again.
I know it, but I don’t believe it.
I can still hear him gripe about those lousy lottery numbers
Or that slowpoke horse that came in dead last
And cost Jack a bundle.
Good old Jack.
What a card.

Well, let them put some empty wooden box into the ground.
Yes, I said empty.
Let them dump a ton of soil onto it.
Then cap it off with a piece of stone they call a monument.
I have a few monuments of my own.
And long after the last flowers to adorn that stone wither
And all of the surrounding grass is uniform
I’ll still have that old end table
And that crystal ashtray
And that three-way lamp
That Jack picked up for me at a flea market.