Category: poems

Grief hits in so many ways.

Today her cries of pain and the fall to the floor

Have transformed me anew again.

I am become a solid wooden thing,

Heavy and stiff-moving yet somehow

Still possessing a heart.

This heart sounds like a paper ripped in half as it breaks.

This heart feels like a knife stab in my chest as it beats.

I want so much to ease your suffering,

Would happily gather it into my body,

But I can’t.

So I’ll not let you see my distress

But do what little, what pitifully little, I can.

O my love, my dearest one,

I’ll never regret you and our life together.

But love can ask of us a terrible price,

And mine to pay is the witness, the wait, and the question in your eyes.

Please give me a little longer, I ask.

I don’t know how to answer.

I can say nothing about a new year.

When did it begin, and how did we know?

I look back over the past few days,

Seeking to recall that liminal space that others must have entered.

I never was there, stood on no threshold,

Took no step that had such transformative power.

I attended a party organized to announce this event

But must have glanced away during the crucial moment.

My days look no different when I awaken;

The sounds of the night hold no strange new tones.

But that evening a stranger on an unfamiliar motorcycle

Pulled in the driveway, met my eyes briefly, and then departed.

Perhaps he was the transitionary herald, signaling change with a wave of his hand,

Leaving nothing but the faintest slick of an oily rainbow

To glisten on the cold pavement under the moon.

Walking is always a dangerous thing, and the local deities must have their due.

We offer them pain and loss of face and hope they’ll be satisfied with scraped skin, blood, and shame.

Sometimes they demand broken bones and suffering prolonged.

Sometimes they ask for more, and the night fills with sirens and terrible grief.

Visitors stride hand-in-hand, often conversing or gazing around.

Residents tread with more guarded mien, knowing the area’s capricious cast.

We bedeck the streets with flowers hung; place propitiatory wreaths on front doors.

This illusion appeases us and thus we forget

That hungry gods must always be fed and so presume to calculate our loss.

We never think, “It will be my son. My mother. My dearest friend.”

We never think, “It will be me.” We never think, “It will be all of us.”

We never hear how the mountains shudder when death plays jigs

On a cadaverous fiddle and laughs and laughs and laughs.

I want to sleep

Eyes made heavy by the afternoon sky

Gray clouds pregnant fat with snow or rain or both

Hanging so low they scrape the trees

Get caught on vines and utility wires

That droop further from their weight

I want to sleep

Sink into the weariness of the year’s end

Surrender stubborn wakefulness to winter’s sway

Not think of anything needful for an hour or so

Join her in a warm bed and rest

The beat of her heart gets ever louder.

Her breathing ever more labored.

I listen and I listen and I listen.

What I fear now is silence.

I will not sleep.

Because I’ve known hunger

Been among those who go to eat among strangers

Taking whatever food was offered and the chance to sit down

Because I’ve known hunger

Been among those who walk the streets in thrift-store coats

Wishing desperately for a cup of hot coffee and the chance to sit down

Because I’ve known hunger

Been among those who get blamed for this and all our other lacks

Wanting to tell our stories and the chance to sit down

An empty belly gnaws at your hope in the future.

The hard trudge through wintry streets lacerates your ability to breathe here and now.

The dirty shame impoverishes your cling to self-worth.

What price do you pay, and it’s harder than ever.

I’d put benches everywhere. For a start.

One summer family fishing trips began, with my father, my mother, me.

I liked the walks involved, often down some overgrown dirt road

That ended with a view of the river and a dock.

My parents had the usual gear of poles, wiggling things for bait,

Bad snacks, and beer, all things I would not touch.

I carried my own, being a couple of books, pen and paper, sunflower seeds,

And a thermos of hot tea.

They’d settle down to nosh, drink, and the usual trash talk, all given requirements for catching a fish,

While I’d find an appropriate tree, climb it, open a book and read.

Sometimes I’d ponder my own hypocrisy and wonder at its nature

Which was that I refused to kill worms to catch the fish,

Often protested the act of fishing itself on the spot ( to the point of monotony I was told),

But once home and presented with dinner would still eat the catch.

The time I tried to follow the logical end of my principles,

I found myself given an empty plate at every meal, for my mother had her own set of rules.

Stubbornness, even that of a small mulish child determined to be right, eventually succumbs to hunger.

I knew what I would find,

yet I returned again and again.

It wasn’t that I thought

that your cold eyes would thaw

that your stony visage would soften,

rather, my misguided belief that I could learn

to warm myself before your frozen disdain

to make a home within your rocky disregard.

my fault, my grievous fault,

but I had not yet read the tragedians

to understand how deadly a mother can be.

I found comfort in the Oresteia.