Featherweight

When the strength you need

becomes all of the strength

you've given...

When unexpected loss

Takes your breath away

too...

When you balance 

All of your own weight

on your own 

two feet

without feeling

push or pull...

Flight may occur

When your vision is blurred

from speed, you see,

Direction is irrelevant

to destination.

When arrival is relative

to departure

and landing is only

One stop

of many...

It starts to feel 

Easier to open 

Both arms, wings 

and just soar...

A rough legged hawk soars over Seedskadee NWR, looking for its next meal. Photo Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS via Wikimedia Commons.

Wait Capacity

Ghosted

by your own spirit,

soul stuck in a purgatory

until the facts are faced,

finally-

what then?

Lucid flesh like

apparition, unheard

and in between 

pain and suffering-despair

and the need to 

continue to breathe

cradling the heartbeat,

insisting endurance

and through it.

There was no There 

there,

carbon copies of conceit,

echoing

'I was here'.

Nothing gained

without loss,

as if grief gave more

than it took 

of Us

Distorted shadow figures

have mistaken

me

for empty.

Painting by Sergey Vinogradov, dated before 1938 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Laundering

Where does one begin
to unpack the suitcase of grief?

While it may be nice to throw it all away,
or donate these shreds,
I find it impossible to imagine
never
wearing those favorite jeans again,
the perfect bra, the stained shirt,
the holy sleeping attire-

I have no desire
to wash and fold and put away
for the 235th time
these obligatory articles.

I sense that grief starts with the smell
held between the threads
and remember distinctly
the quilt my grandmother made me
that fell apart
completely-
like family...

Long gone,
I ponder the scraps
and marvel a few moments
at all the layers we carry
and feel a sudden need
to give the shirt off my back

only to see
how I was made
myself again
woven with only
the softest flesh.



Painting by Aristarkh Lentulov (1882-1943) 'During the laundry', c. 1910, Public domain.

Ebb tide

Tragic are those lingering losses,
comic are the erratic gains
all rippled with guilt
as if others saw
perception seemed worth its weight
to carry with us
all life, blending together in summation,
sometimes synchrony, although
in our exclusion
atonement is a single strike,
a note that takes its sound
along with others,
once more
the chorus comes-
laughter snaps like light limbs
which dam up
the tear ducts
for a time,
like ours when passage
was most important
and our structures remain
sound against the wait of all things
pushed to sea.


Painting by James Whitelaw Hamilton c. 1896 housed in the Yale Center for British Art [Public domain].