After days of deep grief
Poems
- Complete Poetry Publication List
- The oldest lobster fisher in the world says she might as well keep doing it
- A Reckoning With Johnny Appleseed
- The sparrows (Once again, I was wrong)
- For the grandmother teaching the children how to plant seeds in the community garden
- Substitutions for Buttermilk
- Make Believe
- For the students
- An Answer
- The scientist and the poet
- A 10-year old boy finds a stick on a field trip to the beach
- Clutch
- Erosion
- Piano lessons
- On the Impermanence of Tools
- The Photographer
- A Deeper Pretending
- After days of deep grief
- The News
- How I Wanted to be Beautiful
- Gathering stones
- Writing on Mother’s Day
- Learning to Fish
- Every day something new
- Insights from Arthropods
- Defensible Space
- Turtles at the Convention Center
- Spring Hatch
- On the evolution of shadows
After days of deep grief
the air feels like ocean.
But no amount of swimming lessons
readied you for this fall beyond sight.
You try to leave the house
without ripping open.
Walk the dog.
Send mail.
But everything is a trip wire
reminder of what has been lost.
The broccoli––
what you coaxed him towards as a child.
An orange–– he ate so many.
Model airplanes and finger paints.
His favorite kind of bread
lines up in neat rows
at the grocery store.
One whole row
has been removed.
At the back of the shelf,
bread bags fall into one another,
barely propped up,
shaped around emptiness.
Your hand will never stop reaching
toward what he loved.
The empty row will never be refilled.
A space you’ll keep stumbling over
with heart and eyes.
Hands that want
to busy themselves,
send a letter,
twist over
and over
on the heavy shore.
—
Originally published in Poetry Breakfast.
