Category: Grief
-
Be it ever so
The light that morning came through a crack in the ceiling with me squatting over a pool, fed by some endless spring running far under ground, unseen, always present. The water made images of our faces flat with shadows, asked us to pause, fed us with wonder, perplexity, confusion, hope, disconsolation. I rose as always…
-
Conversations with my mother, now long-dead
I write to you everyday and each night in my mind — out of sight, out of love, out of repetition. Wearing grooves through stone along the road, my words think they can erase the first set and grind rather new ones or wipe them out altogether, letting me slide free off these memories, into…
-
Atonement
The winter was kind to the day lilies and goats weed this year. They burst wild showing off ambitious new roots. It was less kind to that little hinoki I transplanted in September. Alas, reckoning begins. I pluck it from the soil. Birds flit seeds where they may, freeze lines rise, fall, encroach, the sun…
-
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…
-
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,…
Poems from in between 