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Posts Tagged ‘dead’

While Thinking About Letting Go

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 16, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
I hold a sunflower in my heart,
not in golden bloom, but filled
with small, dry seeds,
a desiccated husk of a disk, brittle
and brown. I hold it here
as a reminder some gifts
look unwanted at first.
I remember the autumn afternoon
I went to pull the dead remains
from the garden, then watched
as the Stellar’s jays landed
atop the tall dark stalks
and feasted. So I let the row
stand instead of clearing it away.
In my attempts to remove
what seemed no longer useful,
I almost missed this chance
to see the Stellar’s Jays balance
on the tips of the plants,
their bodies a blue exultation of wing.
What else have I tried to clear
from my heart too soon? How
easy to miss what is still nourishing.
Out my window, the jays gather
at the banquet of what is dead.
I am learning the wisdom of holding.
 

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When It Looks As If I’m Talking to Myself

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 21, 2024| 8 Comments »

 
I’m talking to the dead.
Oh, look at the bunny,
I say to the empty kitchen.
I didn’t know I would be
the kind of woman
who talks to the dead,
who narrates the day,
who believes they hear me
after midnight when I whisper
I miss you.
I say I love you
as I walk in the spruce
and falling snow,
say isn’t it beautiful
into the crystalline air,
and the scene is more beautiful
for the sharing.
When I am alone,
I am always talking to the dead
about what it’s like to be here
in their absence.
How strangely wondrous
life can be after a loss.
I feel their presence
in the listening,
feel how the listening wraps
its tender arms around me,
feel how gently the listening
leans in to cradle my face
with silence.
 

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The End

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

Dusting the heads
of dead animals,
I think of how much
my father cherishes
this antelope, this duck,
this winged thing I cannot name,
and I understand that it is not
the thing itself that still
thrills him and makes
him want to keep it on the wall,
but the memory of the thing,
how alive it was, how alive
he was in the killing of it.

*

Over tempura, Pam tells me
of the time that she went
to a man’s home, and there
on the couch was his rich wife,
stuffed, her hand stretched out
in eternal greeting. It had been
in her will, the taxidermic clause
stating that he would lose everything
if he buried her. I sip my sake
and laugh, perhaps because
it is funny, perhaps because
I do not know what to say.

*

Though it is snowing
the room is filled with slant sunshine
and the light does what light does,
it seeks out the darkness.
I feel how what I think I know
has become something dead,
though once it greeted me
with open hands. Though once
I was ripe with it.

*

If we’re made of dust
what is doing the breathing?

*

Not that I want
an answer to that.
Only to be a vehicle
for asking.

*

In the parking lot,
the sound of geese.
No one could say
it is beautiful,
the strangled song
slicing the cold, clear air.
But they’re singing,
my god, they are singing.

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