Dear Roy for Roy Buchanan

They tell us you hung yourself in a drunk tank
in New Orleans. I was barely conscious back then,
but if I had been older, I would've seen it coming.
Your record still stuns us all--dead in our tracks
like deer in headlights witnessing something
so frighteningly real. It might have felt like
you were playing real great in the drunken
weeks and months to follow, but, damn it, Roy,
we all know you weren't, and it hurts to hear.
We all know you tried to go straight too,
and sorrowfully realize that you finally figured out
the straight life just wasn't yours. What none of us
know for sure is what finally pushed you over.
Was it waking up and realizing you'd loved
your art more than your own family and were left
finally with nothing, after you'd sullied your muse
so thoroughly? Was it reckoning with the fact that you
would leave the world as you had come, naked
and alone? Many of us know what it's like to be
alone, really alone. We can't know the sorrow
which beset you, but one thing's for sure: we,
the lonely, are only lonelier because you left so early.
Know that you have many devotees and that,
despite your worst fears, your art will be eternal;
it will live on, known with awe and reverence by
the hearts and minds of all who heard it. This
lonely world is only richer because you lived, Roy,
and only poorer because you left so soon. All of us,
in our own ways, pray that you finally found
your peace, wherever you went. All my love, Adam

(2006)