. . . who died of throat cancer

A week of waking in the middle of the night,

Cough and sore throat leaving me speechless,

And I think of you again who said "the branch

Will not break" from the leaps of joy of a blue

Jay bouncing again and again on it. But here

It is not delight but dread of the winter solstice

Racing down the Rockies and across the plains,

Snow driven blindly at sixty miles an hour

Toward my own pines, already bending in wind

Whipping the boughs like tattered storm flags.

You left us unable to say any last words - if

There is a harder leaving for a poet of places

And passages and loneliness I hope to never

Know it. Sometimes there is only the storm

To speak for us, and I can tell you now Jim,

Writing these lines to wherever you have come,

Sometimes the branch breaks.

The quote is from Wright's poem "Two Hangovers," Number Two:

I Try to Waken and Greet the World Again