Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, friendship, poem, poetry on July 11, 2015| 2 Comments »
I may never see you again.
I’m not trying to be morbid,
it’s just true. But that’s not
the reason I hug you so long,
so close. It’s just because
it feels so good to hold you,
your arms in my arms,
your laugh so familiar,
my smile so real, so unhidden.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, death, poem, poetry on February 22, 2015| 3 Comments »
Whitish and filmy, their eyes clouded over,
the dead bluegills and croppies would float
to the top of the lake and catch in the seaweed.
I’d splash with my hands at the water’s surface
and make waves to push their rotting bodies
toward the neighbor’s pier.
And then my brother and I would play.
Death, then, was just something to push away,
certainly nothing that had anything to do with us.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, ekphrasis, life, poem, poetry, window on December 19, 2014| 1 Comment »
No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!
― Charles Dickens, ”A Christmas Carol”
Through the window, I see myself,
dead. The white sheet doesn’t cover
my feet, and they stretch, stupid and pink,
off the edge of the gurney. There is too little
callus on them. They should be dirty
from walking the world. What a waste to die
with clean feet. The earth would not be
so covered in dirt if we were supposed to stay clean.
And there I am, facing away from the corpse.
So human to want to turn away. My sleeves
are rolled up, but my hands hang empty.
And here on the street, I see in the window
some semblance of my face,
not quite transparent, but substanceless.
I pick up a rock small enough to throw,
big enough to break the glass. No.
I drop the rock, untie my shoes instead.
This poem is a response to a picture, part of Rattle’s Ekphrasis challenge …
http://www.rattle.com/images/ekphrasisbernal.jpg
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, fishing, poem, poetry on November 15, 2014| 4 Comments »
and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “To a Young Child: Spring and Fall”
I don’t remember if the lake outside the window
was open or frozen, but I remember the way my mother
guided my bangs away from my eyes as she said,
“Your grandpa Chuck has died.” I had already learned,
perhaps even from him, to gut and skin bluegills and bass.
I’d strung worms like pink garland on empty hooks,
but I’d not yet considered the death of men.
I sensed something sharp rising in my throat then,
what?—something that scraped its length.
Water dammed at the bottoms of my eyes. “Mommy,” I said,
“I think I’m going to cry.” I remember being surprised.
“Oh my darling,” she said, “That’s right. That’s okay.”
I did not know then how many more tears would find me,
how familiar the tug at my throat would become. With each death
of a loved one, sometimes even with strangers, I feel it,
the barb of the hook as it sets, the sharp ache, the yank
as strong hands begin to reel in the invisible line
pulling me toward the horizon.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, death, life, poem, poetry on November 3, 2014| 3 Comments »
They know what we do not.
Not that I envy the dead their knowledge.
I am grateful to be one of the ones standing here
amidst the crumble of granite and marble
while the words of Merwin and Yeats and Hafiz
weave into the quiet of the graveyard air.
I am curious, but not eager to slip out of this
human garment. What a blessing
to have a body, to look long into another human’s eyes,
to hold each other as we weep, to laugh
and to kiss and to wander arm in arm through the cemetery
on a day when the sun and rain both have their way.
What a blessing to read poems in the presence
of the dead about what it means to be alive.
Before we leave, we sing a prayer for every being—
and though I stumble on the words and fumble
the tune, and though I do not know who
might grant the prayer, I sing, I sing.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alter ego, coffin, death, life, poem, poetry on October 13, 2014| 5 Comments »
Wild Rose Goes Shopping for a Coffin
Not the one with airplanes painted on it.
Though it was fun to climb inside and pretend
she was the pilot, passing out barf bags to imaginary corpses.
Not the bamboo one, too bamboo-ey.
Not the willow one lined with wool. It scratched her face
during her afternoon nap. The salesman really didn’t like
the whole nap thing, but Wild Rose just invited him in to join her.
Not the sixteen-gauge stainless steel with hermetic seals.
Sure it looked durable, but when she danced in it,
it made such a racket, and not the kind of racket she liked.
The mahogany, too somber. And the blue and white veneer
reminded her of her Holly Hobby lunchbox from second grade.
Well, she told the salesman, there’s nothing here for me.
Stepping out into the sharp autumn wind, she’d never felt so alive.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, garden, poem, poetry on June 15, 2014| 3 Comments »
This is how the night finds its way
in through the open window: without
asking. It has already been to Finland,
Georgia, Ohio. And the cold front, it is moving
across the land in the same unapologetic way,
only in the opposite direction. There
is shrivel in their meeting, like a woman who
is too tired to stand ever again.
Out in the garden, the basil,
the marigolds, the cosmos,
the beans, they do not put up
a fight. They just let the night and the cold
do what night and cold do midsummer.
Their leaves droop and darken,
limp flags of surrender.
This is what the end looks like
sometimes. No blush, no gasp,
no inheritance. No trumpets,
no angel band. And no one declaring
victory. Just a quiet, sad plot that only
hours ago was blurting life, so lush,
so full of tomorrow’s seeds. Who are we
to shake our fists. It’s not personal.
And though we may be tempted to run
the other direction, if we could find it,
we know we are somewhere in a line
marked Next. No. Better to stay right here
and tend what still grows, the parsley,
the peas, the tiniest bits of pale green kale
still pushing their way through the cold ground.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, fish, loss, poem, poetry, transition on May 27, 2014| 1 Comment »
Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya
(Sanskrit: Om, lead us from the unreality to the Reality, from the dark to the light, from the fear of death to the knowledge of immortality)
By morning, all the fish are dead.
The silvery minnow. The pale pink gourami.
Both angelfish. They’re all dead, floating
in the tank upside down, two on the bottom,
the others dull at the top. Their eyes
are not yet gauzy. We wake and question what could
have happened. We check the thermometer.
It’s normal. Then what? Did they battle? Was it something
in the water? We wonder what we could have done
to have saved them. It is terrible, the loss, the not
knowing, the feeling of remorse. We long to make
it right somehow, but death has merciless laws.
So we carry them in a bowl to the river
past the willows that survived last night’s frost.
And we release them into the current,
singing them on their way with a song of transition,
though we know that the song is for us.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, goldfish, love, pet, poem, poetry on May 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
You are not snuggly
nor cuddly, don’t fetch,
don’t do tricks,
but for three years
you have followed us
around the kitchen
with your bulgy eyes,
and you’ve outlived
every other fish.
You have carried
the weight of a young
boy’s love and appear
to have found peace
inside a cage. These
days watching you list
and rest are painful,
heartrending days. It’s not
your way to caress or kiss,
but it’s human to want to hold
what is dying. It’s human
to want to nurture what hurts.
And how human we are,
sitting beside you, gulping
the terrible air, huddled
into each other, holding
what love we can.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alter ego, death, doom, friendship, kismet, poem, poetry on April 5, 2014| 4 Comments »
Of course she knows she is doomed.
That is not the part that bothers her.
Everyone is doomed. Lawyers.
Dilettantes. Poets. Priests.
She never takes Kismet personally.
Not even when he rips her dress
just before she goes on stage.
Not even when she is sick, near death.
Not even when she trips and splats
full body on the wall of her own loneliness.
She knows being doomed just comes
with the package. Still she can’t help
but wonder if Kismet is not, perhaps,
open for a little seduction. Cause Wild Rose
has a friend that she wishes that Kismet might
just forget to visit with his little dark bag
of doom if only she can keep
him interested here in her thighs
for just one more day, one more night.
* For those who have not met her yet, Wild Rose is my alter ego, the one who does everything that I am too frightened or embarrassed to do.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, fate, life, poetry, short poem on March 17, 2014| 1 Comment »
watching them move,
those lips you haven’t
kissed me with
*
I am equal parts
delight and distraught—
the melting pond
*
on my inner thigh
impression of twisted sheets—
by noon all is lost
*
I am not the one
behind the bars, but her story
imprisons me
*
another day, another
day, another day I
haven’t died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalanche, death, loss, poem, poetry on January 4, 2014| 2 Comments »
the map is shrinking
still, all tremble, we plot
the points that remain
*
in the rush,
in the roar, in the rumble
the silence after
*
I hate white
this is no confession
I hate it
*
the body, crushed,
lungs, crushed, shape of a man
dug up
*
not my nephew,
not my blood, still
these tears
*
howl turns to yelp
turns to gurgle turns
to snow catching sun
*
where in my body
is there white? how
might I forgive it
*
out from under,
this struggle, we take turns,
sometimes it’s personal
*
sometimes the white says
don’t come near me, sometimes it sings
your name
*
I did not read
the obituary, only your letter
black scratch on white
*
blank page, blank page,
white cloud, white skull, white slope
another blank page
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, friendship, poem, poetry on December 19, 2013| 1 Comment »
One of the possible side effects,
she says, pointing to the bottle
that I have just sipped till its empty,
is immediate and serious.
Death, she says. I fall in love
with the way she says the word,
so final, so sure, and with the way
that she waited to tell me about
the danger until after I drank the liquid,
and with the way she insisted I not drink
the bottle alone. Never mind
what it was. I’m alive.
And something inside me
is so, so thirsty.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, ekphrasis, gratitude, life, poem, poetry on December 4, 2013| 4 Comments »
Notice, says the docent,
how the slash of flesh
creates a diagonal across the canvas.
This creates movement,
he explains, makes the painting
dynamic, more alive.
The slash is Jesus. His naked body
is clearly not alive. His blood
has stilled inside the pale skin.
The people around him
wear the pink stain of anguish,
behind them the sky skews toward black.
After forty four years,
I have never seen a dead body
unaltered by a mortician.
This is a fact aided by luck,
a small family, and a national obsession
with pushing death away.
Every hour, 6,319 people die.
Every minute, 105. Every second,
1.8. Excluding natural disasters.
Though it would be more polite
to say that 1.8 people passed.
Or 1.8 people breathed their last.
Or that 1.8 people departed.
Though since you started to read
this poem, over 60 people have
died, no matter what we call it.
All this perhaps explains why today
I noticed so many things
on the diagonal. The mountains,
of course. The sloping bangs
on the face of the girl. The tilt
of your voice as you greeted me.
The wine as it agreed with the angle
of the tipping glass. I noticed them because
I only this week learned have learned to notice the angle
of things, and perhaps because I am learning, too,
to notice the false guarantees.
On days such as these, I wake
and think, my god, what a gift to wake up,
what a windfall, this cold floor,
this dark of the morning
before the sun leans through the dark
to slant its faraway light into our room.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged all souls, birthday, cemetery, day of the dead, death, life, poem, poetry on November 3, 2013| 6 Comments »
On a hill
in the sun
at the edge
of the grave
in the grass
let us meet
on the day
when the veils
are thin
between
the worlds—
and perhaps
the Aztec
goddess
will open
her fleshless jaw
so that all
the stars
fall out
as they did
today
so that we
might find them
inside
each other’s words
and speak
of darkness
with syllables
made
of light.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, language, loss, love, Mike Adams, poem, poetry on September 27, 2013| 3 Comments »
—for Crazy Cloud
It is raining and sometimes
it is snow. In the gutter
outside my window the stones
are gray and rose, equal parts
dingy and glittersome.
Across the way, the spruce tree
is more blue than green.
Its trunk is crooked. Its boughs
uneven. On a day such as this
it is so human to want to seek warmth,
to want to lean whatever in us
is crooked and blue toward another’s
crooked blueness and find
some communion there. So human
to want to say something true,
perhaps about how fragile
this life is, perhaps about love,
but these truths are like
the simplest stones,
changing color each time
we try to describe them.
Easier to say it is raining
and sometimes it is snow.
Though already the clouds
are clearing. Already the spruce
gathers late morning sun
in fat droplets that hang
under needles. I am walking
around the things I do not wish
to say as much as those that I do.
Like he’s gone. Like it hurts.
Like it’s fragile, this life, though he was
strong. Like he was never ours.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, haiku, life, poetry, short poem on May 24, 2013| 2 Comments »
I am not
in any hurry says the earth
to my breath
*
turning myself
into blue sky, meeting
you there
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged burial, death, gravedigger, humanity, New Verse News, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Thomas Lynch on May 15, 2013| 1 Comment »
Did anyone else hear the interview with the undertaker on NPR last week? It was part of the inspiration for this poem of mine, published in New Verse News today. New Verse News is, incidentally, a really interesting emag that publishes poems written around current events, in this case the debacle surrounding the burial of the Boston Bomber.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alter ego, death, poem, poetry on May 4, 2013| 2 Comments »
Wild Rose walks into a bar.
She is wearing a very small
black dress that shows off
the bulge of her belly,
the rippled skin of her thighs,
and the desert flatness of her chest.
She catches the eyes of no one.
There is no one here she wants
to meet except the very happy man
in the corner who is buying
drinks for everyone.
“You’re a bit late,”
Death says to her as she sits
across from him.
“I know,” she says. “I wasn’t sure
what to tell the family, so I said
I’d be at a PTA meeting.”
“Dressed like that?” he says,
and he gives her a wink.
“You look ready for anything.”
He hands Wild Rose a drink.
Tequila. She licks the salt
from his hand.
“Let’s dance,” he says.
“On the tables,” she says.
And the band never
takes a break.
