for Vivian
When you’re not here
I still say the things
only you understand—
Right … Right …
I said last night to an empty room.
If you were here, you would
have said in unison with me
Right as always, Barbie.
As it is, I said the words myself,
then laughed, then felt
in my chest the sharp pinch
of you not being here,
a sharp pinch that unfurls
into a petal soft awareness
that you are grown and gone
and it’s something so wanted
but no less hard.
When you’re not here,
you are still so here, even
when it feels wrong, right?
You live in a here far away
at the same time you live here
in my thoughts,
here in this empty room
where I don’t hear you say,
Right, right as always.
Posts Tagged ‘absence’
In the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, connection, death on August 11, 2026| 10 Comments »
Quiet as a rabbit
nibbling on grass,
obvious as a flicker
knocking on a tree,
surprising as a white feather
landing on my tights,
again and again,
you appear, or more truly,
again and again,
I see what has
always been here—
you in everything,
your absence
throbbing with life.
Fledgling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, college, daughter, graduation, heartbreak, letting go, mother on August 3, 2026| 11 Comments »
Now that I know for certain she will leave me,
I dare to love her more. Her room will be empty.
The house no longer filled with her music.
The spilling trills of her laughter too far away to hear.
I have known since her birth she would leave me,
but knowing is different from feeling, and her absence
comes so soon. At the same time the heart lets her go,
lets her go, lets her go, it leans in closer, becomes a sanctuary
that knows no walls, a nest as wide as the world.
At the same time I release her, I fall more deeply in love
with the way she croons to her cat, with the feathery softness
of her skin, with how a song is ever winging from her lips.
I welcome it, this ache. These tears were always meant
to be cried. This heart was always meant to break.
Out of the Corner of My Eye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, grief, mother, presence, river, son on May 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
Sometimes I expect to see him walking by the river,
to see his tall, thin body move through the willows,
camera in hand. I don’t see him, of course, but I do,
I see him as a young man in a blue button-up shirt,
his hair cut short, his movements doe-like as he
picks his way through the rocks. And sometimes
I see him a young boy, still blonde, still shrieking
with joy at the splash he can make with a big river rock.
And sometimes I see him as the willows themselves,
as if he’s come back in everything—the willows,
the river, the stones, the trees, this woman
who is standing at the window, looking.
A New Kind of Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, connection, conversation, death, presence, speaking on August 23, 2022| 2 Comments »
It is possible to be with someone who is gone.
—Linda Gregg, “The Presence in Absence”
I have no phone receiver to connect me to the other side,
but every day I speak to my beloveds through candle flame.
Every night, I speak to them through the dark before sleep.
I speak to them in the car when I am alone.
I speak to them when I walk beneath stars,
when I walk in the woods, when I walk in the rain.
It is possible to be with someone who is gone.
It is possible to feel what cannot be seen,
to sense what cannot be heard,
to be held by what cannot be touched.
It is possible for love to grow after death.
If there is a secret, it is, perhaps, openness.
The way air lets light move through.
The way a window invites in the scent of grass.
The way sand receives the ocean,
then, rearranged, lets it pass.
This poem was published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry on 9/11/22
Two Truths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, death, grief, presence on February 13, 2022| 7 Comments »
after Ruth Stone, “Train Ride”
He is dead. Never again to pull on the fencing mask, moonwalk to his bedroom or snuggle on the couch. Not dancing on the stage. He is dead. Not spinning the gator through the field. Not graphing equations for fun. Is he dead? asks the heart. No, he lives on forever. In the scent of lemon. In the cloudy ice on the pond. In the buds of the lilac tree. In the song on my breath. He lives in blue sky and comet and field. He lives in ink and in spaces between. He is dead. I held his body in my arms. Since that day, he has never left me. He is alive forever.
Ambush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, grief, mother, orange juice, shopping, son on October 21, 2021| 6 Comments »
It was the orange juice aisle that did it.
I stood there staring at cartons
I knew I wouldn’t buy because you
are gone. My son, I stumble on you
everywhere you are not. Which is everywhere.
The only way to learn how to meet
your absence is by meeting it.
In the car. At the table. In the yard.
On the phone. At the school.
And there in the orange juice aisle
where I stared at the cartons on the shelf
then walked on, the cart still empty.
One Trick
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, bird, longing, poem, poetry, tanager on January 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Presence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, cat, poem, poetry, presence on February 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »
When the cat ran away,
I noticed how she did not move
between the legs of the chairs,
how she did not yowl by her bowl
nor sit in the window. Everything
I saw was where she was not.
All day, I held it close,
her absence. All day,
I thought how she was not here.
Was it true?
Eating Dinner with
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, nothing, poem, poetry, zero on January 9, 2018| 3 Comments »
What gave numbers their power was the very act of naming them and writing them down.
—Amir Aczel, “The Origin of the Number Zero,” Smithsonian Magazine, December, 2014
Imagine, says my friend, before 700
there was no zero, which means
before that there was no concept
of nothing. In my bowl,
there is only a bit of squash soup left.
I add some salt, take a small bite.
There is less. I remember reading
that numbers exist outside
the human mind. Not like
a John Deere tractor that’s invented.
Not like a sonata that’s composed.
I take another bite of soup.
it is warm and tastes of apple
and thyme. I try to imagine it,
not knowing of nothing.
What would I have said
was in my bowl now that
the soup is gone? What
would I have thought
was in the chair beside me
here where you are not?
How would it change this
all that is, not comprehending
this all that is not?
The Need for Absence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, emptiness, poem, poetry, shoveling, snow on January 7, 2018| 4 Comments »
For an hour and a half, my son and I
create emptiness. All those places
where there was snow
on the drive and the walk,
we shovel them until there’s a long,
sinewy swath of absence.
It is deeply satisfying,
this moving of matter
from one place to another,
creating a path, a way.
When we are done, we lean
on our shovels and revel
in what is missing. We high five
and smile and feel as if we’ve really
accomplished something together.
How oddly full I feel
after this effort of emptying.
How many paths in me
are waiting to be exposed?
When October Goes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, fall, loss, love, poem, poetry on October 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
And now we come to the part of autumn
which is more fell than falling.
It’s hard to not miss the gold,
just as it’s hard to not miss the lips
of your lover when he’s gone.
You tell yourself that absence
makes the heart grow. Your self
is not impressed. You tell yourself
that the absence
is beautiful. But absence today is
absence—an inability to be present,
and your thoughts are anywhere
but here—in fact, they have gone to one
specific anywhere where it’s still
gold and warm and the heart
is so full it can’t hear a word anyone says
in an attempt to warn it
about how things change.
At the Science Museum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, kaleidoscope, poem, poetry, solitude on February 14, 2014| 1 Comment »
standing inside
the life-size kaleidoscope
infinite reflections
of me
without you
Four Continuations
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, continuing, poem, poetry, presence on August 31, 2013| 1 Comment »
that old crow,
perhaps he spoke first
with you
*
removing the clothes
from my thoughts—someone
left the gate open
*
out the window
I see only where the cottonwood
does not stand
*
dew on my song
have I really been singing
this long?
Eating the Soup without Salt
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, emptiness, longing, love, poem, salt on December 30, 2012| 5 Comments »
Something is missing.
At least that is what
the palate says. Though
so much is here. Nudge
of onion. Wink of cumin.
The lentil’s warm shrug.
It is like, perhaps,
a person who, feeling
a certain emptiness
longs to fill it with
a voice. Though all
around him, voices,
not hers.
The soup is warm,
but not there the spark,
the sharp song, the crystalline chime.
It is easy to taste
mostly absence. We are
hard wired to want it,
to crave it, adore it.
We’ve evolved
alongside of our need.
No one wants to hear
they can’t have what
they want. We cannot
untaste what we’ve tasted.
They say we are mostly
made of emptiness.
Sometimes I understand.
While Listening to Herbie Hancock
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, Herbie Hancock, music, poems, poetry, presence, union on April 19, 2012| 3 Comments »
the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon
transcended
the circle momentarily complete
—Lenore Kandel
Perhaps
we,
too,
are
more
empty
space
than
note,
our
bodies
like
this
minor
tune—
vast
expanses
of
what
isn’t
here
held
together
by
something
almost
beautiful
that
is.