Even the spires of milkweed
bend over in the low tumble
of wind through the prairie,
dry reeds tapping hollow
on ancient gravestones.
When I left you here,
the ground was frozen and wet,
with pelting sleet leaving
a pebbled sheet on the grass,
the canopy, the cars.
How different it feels
in August now, sun high, grass
grown in as if it had never
been cut into, and reeds
making that lonely ostenato.
How absent you are
of the chaos of life, sticky
love that weighs you down
at every leaving,
fills you with doubt,
how you are not unbound.
You are no longer tethered
and yet somehow
not untethered either,
me lingering as I do.
6 responses to “Visitation”
I sense wistfulness with understanding.
Hmmm. Yes. Thanks for that.
Wonderfully visual & atmospheric, thoughtful. Today would have been my dad’s birthday…those last three lines especially hit home. So glad I read this today.
Oh, Jennifer. That means so much to me. I wrote this visiting my mother’s and grandfather’s gravesites. It is all so complicated, comforting and hard. Death is such a vacuum. Peace —
The way it moves (in both time and emotion) is magnificent.
Grateful to be reading some of your poetry again 🙂
Thank you. I am coming back, but have found writing offline to be a good practice for a while. Looking forward to NaPoWriMo and to reconnecting.