Category: Death

• Waiting for the doctor

  hazy dry, as if in midair distant beeps, rattles, blood pressure cuff wheezing up, releasing, hour after hour, day may become day Of all possible recollections, you pick the one from December twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth, you revolve, nineteen-fifty-three in ice cold Korea showering down in luxuriance, soap, frigid water trailing over your skin after…

  Jenifer

  November 10, 2016

  Aging, Death, Dying, Meditation, Memory, My family, Parenting, Veteran’s Day, Violence

  poetry

• Wondrous grit of life

  o’ wondrous pain, illuminating discomfort — how you have painted this earth to suit your ease, the slow swing of your step it is perhaps a sign of your privilege that you praise cuts and bruises to small children who do not know to defend your princess could not sleep with even a pea under…

  Jenifer

  November 4, 2016

  Death, Dying, From Hafiz, Grief, Love, Mother, Muse, Pain, Tanka, Violence

  poetry

• I think of love

  I think of love as something that grows form as it ages, sometimes firm, sometimes round, broadening, ambling if allowed. I think of love as an elemental discovery, unwrapping itself time and again, ever revealing eccentricities, hope, a whipped dog who greets the morning with joy. Yes, even then. I think of love as the…

  Jenifer

  August 26, 2016

  Aging, Death, Grief, Love, Meditation, Poem sampler, Public, Violence

  poetry

• From the ether

  Late in the afternoon that day, as the low sun pierced the leaves like a thousand glimmering stars, each of my long-dead patients rushed me towards an unexpected, unearned bliss. Of course, it seems shallow how memories, obscured by our endless tasks, doings of this moment or that, can burst into our presence and bring…

  Jenifer

  July 22, 2016

  Aging, Art, Cro-Magnon, Death, Memory, Work life

  poetry

• Why is the woman with the dreadlocks looking away?

  It came to me in a flash as I saw your black body escaping past the marsh, the others turned toward me, running too, that you alone saw away past the mire perhaps a thing to fear, perhaps a deeper knowing, perhaps the future unraveling like a flower, or a tornado whipping us under. I…

  Jenifer

  May 21, 2016

  Art, Death, Grief, Memory, Violence

  poetry

• Old elm

  Abandoned farmhouse, greying outbuildings. Our old elm on the corner that died last year stood through the winter to remind us of its broad generous shade, kind relief now removed. Empty sky. Time unwinds, pulls me back to your year as sapling in crowded woods before this town, this house. Our kinship holds, deeper need,…

  Jenifer

  April 7, 2016

  Ancient, Chicago, Death, Grief, Muse, Nature, Seasons

  poetry