When I say Happy New Year,
I hear my grandmother’s voice
inside my voice, the way
she slapped the first syllable,
the way silence hung for a moment
before she finished the rest of the phrase.
HAP-py New Year!
Each time I say the words, she
is so alive in that moment—
the syllables themselves
wear her bright red nails,
her signature updo
and her rhinestone earrings.
HAP-py New Year!
I sing out again and again,
loving how she enters
each conversation this day.
There are small ways
to bring our beloveds back,
little rituals so strong they
defy the loss, so strong
that each time we do them
we become more and more
who we love. Her voice
becomes my voice and her
joy becomes my joy.
I don’t have to look in the mirror
to see she is here, her smile
my smile curving up from the inside.
Posts Tagged ‘loss’
January 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, death, grandmother, language, loss, new years on January 2, 2021| 3 Comments »
Forecast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, loss, Neruda on October 11, 2020| 6 Comments »
Nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
—Pablo Neruda, “October Fullness,” trans. Alistair Reid
And if we can keep nothing of what we have
then let us love more right now. Naked as sunlight
and unapologetic as ripe apples. Let’s invent
new compassions and conjure new kindnesses
out of what seems to be dust.
And if life is only a borrowing of bones,
then let us use them well while we may.
Just today I ran through the corn maze
and marveled at the joy of being lost.
Bless these borrowed femurs and spines.
Bless these borrowed skulls.
And let us love more right now.
Though the forecast is for loss.
That Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, loss, lost, map, music, song on July 7, 2020| 2 Comments »
I want to slip into the song
you sang, the one with verse
about loss. I want to hang
on its notes as if they were branches
I could swing from, want to climb
through its chorus, want to meet it
in its rests, want to offer it tea.
I want to ask the guitar
about your fingers, about
how they knew where
to find the melody. And how?
I want to speak with the loss itself,
want to ask it if it’s sure its lost,
want to offer it a map made of apples
and wings and moon.
I want to hear the silence after
the song, and then beg it, beg it,
to keep singing.
Anthem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, music, sound on May 9, 2020| 12 Comments »
Today’s anthem is not
my chorus of curses
when the cat knocked
the glass of sauvignon blanc
into my open laptop.
It’s not the clashing swords
in the movie we watched
nor the sobbing
that shook me this morning
when I tried to speak of loss.
The anthem is not
the click of the door
nor the snap of the branch
beneath the Stellar’s jay
nor the soundless slide
of the moon.
Today’s anthem was the hum
I know you would have made
if you’d held me while I wept,
the waves of our breath
inviting us to wade
deeper in.
Loving the Broken Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, grief, loss, love, valentine's day on February 15, 2020| 4 Comments »
Every year the red or pink envelopes would arrive,
three of them tucked into the post office box—
one for my daughter, one for my son, and one
for me. Sally always remembered. My children
were, perhaps, a bit cavalier about the cards—
they’d read the Valentines and smile and set them aside.
But I had an inkling of the longing to give love
inside them. How beautiful her heart.
How lucky I felt to be chosen by her.
How lucky to return her love.
This year, only bills in the post office box
and catalogs for sheets and seeds and clothes.
And the part of me who knows she is gone
shrugs as if I should just go on. But the part
of me who misses her longs today to find
her familiar script on a red envelope. I know
that it’s unreasonable. That doesn’t stop hope.
I tell the part that misses her that it’s okay
to grieve. That it’s okay to feel empty today.
That it’s okay to want to believe in miracles.
I love the part of me that misses her—I love
how it insists on remembering this gift:
Such a wonder to be loved by someone,
such a marvel to love them back.
How It Goes with Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, grief, hope, loss, tenderness, what is on January 15, 2020| 7 Comments »
Eventually a burning hope |
One Especially When It Rains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desert, loss, ocean, poem, poetry, rain on January 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
Missing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, hope, loss, paradox, poem, poetry, science on December 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Hope is, perhaps, a quantum thing,
a paradox, like Schrödinger’s cat,
simultaneously alive and dead.
Today, I wandered the snowy field
and the icy banks and the shadowed wood,
calling the name of my sweet gray cat.
If I could find her now, I’d see
she’s either alive or dead.
But in this moment of uncertainty,
she’s both alive and dead to me.
I’m tugged by both possibilities as I wade
through tall dry grass. Oh damn that hope,
and bless it, too, how just a candle-measure
opposes a whole tower of unfounded certainty,
sends me out into the blizzard
calling her name, listening.
The Second Night the Cat Doesn’t Come Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, loss, poem, poetry on December 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »
catching sight
of where she isn’t—
in the dark behind the window
I see only
my own searching
The Big Lesson, Part II
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged evolution, floor, grace, loss, poem, poetry, trust on May 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
And maybe
though there
is no floor
you find
the grace
in falling—
after all
those years
of baby
steps, with
one plunge
you’re
evolving