Poet's Choice

By Mary Karr
Sunday, June 1, 2008; BW12

My friend Jason Shinder was 52 when he succumbed to leukemia last month. A poet, Jason also founded the Writer's Voice program at New York's West Side YMCA, which spread nationwide, furthering poetry's far-flung infiltrations. Jason's poem "One Day I Will Die" enjoins us to hug each instant hard enough to forge a diamond from the coal. He did. For that, and for his words, I'm grateful.

How proud I am

to be the center

of a tragedy.

Again

and again

the same shadow.

Thank you God.

Thank you shadow.

Happy is the man

who looks into

the deepest folds

of his sorrows.

The soul, lost,

can be stirred.

Thank you sorrows.

Thank you

bottom of the river.

Won't you be forever?

No one else

in sight.

Soon I won't

have to work

to get attention.

Thank you work.

Haven't you carried me

everywhere?

And thank you

silence

for holding me

before I spoke.

AND IT DOES NO GOOD

TO GIVE ME A GLASS

OF WATER.

And it does no good

to wipe the sweat

from my forehead.

Not now.

Not in the night

with my eyes closing.

Thank you night.

This time

before I leave

I want to thank

my friends.

Thank you friends.

Thank you.

What more could I,

a dying man, want?

("One Day I Will Die" appears in "Among Women." Graywolf. Copyright 2001 by Jason Shinder.)