Gone

Gone is Lord Nelson's arm
and gone is the head of Sir Walter Raleigh
which his wife used to carry around in a satchel.

Gone is my hair
and the whole of Amelia Earhart
in the wash of her silver propeller.

And now you are gone,
gone out the door with a suitcase
and over the hill in your car.

You and Homer's eyesight.
You and the children of Hamlin.
Gone like a coin through a grate

or Byron's journals.
Real gone like bebop.
The gone that leaves a zero in the here.

All gone, as we say to children.
All gone,
holding up our empty hands.

--Billy Collins
Copyright © 1997 by Free Lunch Arts Alliance

Other Poets/Other Poems

Kimberly Blaeser, Issue 27

Jared Carter, Issue 24

Billy Collins, Issue 18

Steven Coughlin, Issue 39

Philip Dacey, Issue 6

Stephen Dunn, Issue 34

David Hernandez, Issue 23

Mary Lucina, Issue 26

Cathy Song, Issue 21

R. T. Smith, Issue 38

Charles Harper Webb, Issue 25

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