M was never an easy one to know,
for he thought of himself as just the first
or last hesitant outline of shadow,
a beginning or an ending, subtle,

Neither unambiguously the one
or the other, too vague for expression,
someone who was a half way hint, more than
he had ideas or aesthetic, plan

Or purpose, someone who passed life’s short term
beguiled by intimacies and fictions
arising only in him without clues
as to how they might be made more robust

A trace of M is not the taste of M,
who wished to be flower without a stem