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I Don't Know What to Say to Katie Clemens

I Don’t Know What To Say To Katie Clemens
By Steve Body
Copyright 2009


I don’t know what to say to Katie Clemens.
All the words are jumbled in my head.
They all seem small and empty when I think of
The fact of Jacob Clemens lying dead.

Jake Clemens was my best friend and companion,
Grew up together, never parted ways.
I was Huck Finn, he was ol’ Tom Sawyer.
Folks still talk about the hell we raised.

Just today, I hoisted Jake’s pine coffin.
Just last hour, I watched him leave my life.
What kind of sorry man can’t shake these feelings?
How does a true friend love his best friend’s wife?

“Myocardial infarction”, doctors call it.
All of us just said his heart went bust.
Twelve cowboys, stuck ten miles down in a canyon,
Not a medico among the lot of us.

We were just thirteen when we met Katie.
She was younger than us by a year.
But when her big blue eyes spied Jacob Clemens,
Any other suitors disappeared.

That’s the way it was all through our schoolin’.
I guess it’s just how God declared it be.
There were lots of girls along my way here,
But none that mattered very much to me.

Now I sit alone with Katie Clemens,
Stunned by both my loss and my own heart.
Won’t the damned thing finally just stop beatin’?
Just losin’ Jake has torn it full apart,

But Katie, that was never meant to happen.
It never was and never yet will be.
I can’t respect a friend who courts a widow,
And that, by God, will never be for me.

I don’t know what to say to Katie Clemens.
I don’t know how to say goodbye to Jake.
I don’t know what my life will be from here on.
Don’t know how much a man’s supposed take.

We sit here watching dust motes swim in sunlight.
We watch the shadows climbing up the wall.
I say nothing. She says very little.
Both lost in mem’ries painful to recall.

Time flows like a river, poets tell us.
Grief pours down like silver, singers say.
“I’m always here,” she says, “If you should need me.
Jake wouldn’t want it any other way.”

I don’t know what to say to Katie Clemens.
I nod and rise and squeeze her hand and leave.
To start my life alone, a broken cowboy,
Who wears his heart not on but up his sleeve.

Copyright © Steve Body | Year Posted 2024