Origami

How do you make a decision about a dead man?
The situation is complicated or maybe it’s not.
I’ll try to make it simple for you.
I fold paper cranes at work - simple enough.
I don’t do anything big or intricate,
Just folding scrap paper into cranes when I grow bored.
Walk in and you can see my cranes all over the room
Every desk and cabinet has one or two, some have four.
Green and red, white and cream, plus black, even pink,
Dark blue is popular and sometimes yellow and sky blue.

Actually there is only one sky blue crane.
It sits in Kenneth’s “In” box.
After he died I thought about changing it,
Putting a black crane there instead,
But I decided against it.
It seemed like the kind of gesture only a friend could do,
And I really hadn’t known him that well.
I can’t remember if he liked my cranes
Though I remember everyone else thought they were cute
And never minded when they turned up next to their computers.

It’s possible he didn’t even notice the crane -
He wasn’t doing much work towards the end.
I think I gave him the blue crane to brighten up his desk
The only other color on his whole desk
Was a poster for a college football team from Louisiana.
That’s gone now - his family took it down.
Packed it up and took it along with the rest,
Though they left the crane.