this last grief is surprisingly gentle

it turns out that this last grief is surprisingly gentle

    not the raging denial of diagnosis

        not my clumsy pleading for the sound of your voice

            not the aching, inexorable fall of your silence

not my horror at your frailty

nor my bereftness of knowing your mind

this last grief is gentle

    veiled by the vision of your wholeness

        quiet in the knowledge of your completion

this last grief is only mine

i'll see you later

Until then, know only Joy.

June 25, 2023, Immersive Van Gogh on the Occasion of Your 72nd Birthday

maybe Van Gogh

only ever wanted to be Vincent

  only ever wanted a fraternity of painters

but he couldn’t quite meet minds with Gauguin

  couldn’t find the quiet of his own mind

even slashing his way to semi-silence 

  still could only paint sweeping strokes

of his beautiful sorrow

i can’t find the beauty in my sorrow 

  and have no desire for the guild of grief 

but somehow i think if i could just stay

  in the silence of this music

bathed in the blues of Vincent’s Irises

  and weep with the winds of his star-filled night

i might emerge bereft of you

                          but whole

Anniversaries

One anniversary, my parents took a trip 

to tour their beginnings:

The church that had wed them was now an apartment,

but had honestly faired better than

the honeymoon hotel

—a smoking ruin—

or the Crystal Caves—

caved in. 

One year, a wagon load of hay 

sold to horse farmers from Kentucky 

burnt to the boards 3 miles out the gate.

And there was Mount St Helen’s—

just sharing a date—

their calamiversary, they joked.

A lot of butterfly-stirred typhoons

are bound to share dates over 49 years.

Dad spent their 49th in the hospital,

but he’s not really up to joking around.

ALS takes the smile out, you know?

Still, Mom says she hopes

against all reason

for fifty.

Medic Alert

ALS
DNR
After lifelong strength, 
destruction now reigns.
All’s lost. Sorry. 
DeNied recourse.
Action limited severely. 
Definite. No rebellion.
Alas, long suffering.
Dying. No remedy.
Always losing something.
Do not remember.
Able. Less. Stillness.
Diverse negative ruminations.
Altered—lost stability—
deranged new reality.
Angels look severe!
Derive no redemption.
All—love steady;
death! No return.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis:
Do not resuscitate.
At last, seconds—
Dream. Now resting.
ALS
DNR

Pieces

I've lost you. 

How did I lose

an entire person? 

Someone so much.

Someone so SO?

In pieces, that's how.

First a lost faith--just

a tiny faith--

just a mustard seed.

Just that one 

promise you said

wasn't 

for me. I knew the plans

you had--hope and

a future--but

those weren't mine,

turns out. 

And then 

I lost your voice

on the phone...

The minutes of missed

calls added up

it seems

to words 

that fell into a void...

crossed an event horizon.

I look all over--

the junk drawer.

The dryer.

I take car trips

to where you said

this or that

in case the echo 

is still there. 

The choir loft--

the church's 

rafters seem 

like somewhere

your words might 

have gone bumping;

a balloon

too little 

appreciated.

I find your voice

in dreams.

I watch them drift

into the sky

riding a burning

New Year's lantern.

Your words

in old letters

I keep even 

as I keep

losing you 

in pieces

over 

and over

again.

Grief to Water

I want to take my sorrow to water.

I want to give it to rain

to make its own way.

I want to cast my heartbreak on the river

where stone-skip held-breath 

heartbeats flow to some unknowable sea.

I want to lose my loss in creek beds

among the thirsting roots of sycamores

drinking in secrets of hidden hill hollows.

I want to give my grief to water

to wash my mind cloudless

and leave petrichor behind.

Doppler Shift

When I stir sugar into coffee 
and I think I detect that 
subtle harmonic shift
I remember asking you—

Whenever it’s a question of physics,
I can almost hear your voice again.
When the phone rings—
your name on the screen—
then cuts off…
the sound of silence is no old friend, 
but a cruel Doppler shift

that came with such speed

no intellect could prepare us.

Sometimes, in dreams, I hear your voice again

Sometimes, in dreams, I hear your voice again,
and wake to find that sound is breath and I'm gasping.

If I could fill my lungs with your voice, I would

gladly wait to exhale.

Always before I could embrace exhaustion

and sleep a sleep of silence stronger than sorrow

but now I lay listening, desperate for those speaking 

dreams that come as scant currents in stagnant air.

Forgetfulness

Why would you allow yourself

for even a moment to forget the sorrow 

attendant upon old loves all entangled 

with new and aching knowledge of 

the erratic stone-skip death 

makes upon the surface of being

—oh, because only 

in the momentary forgetfulness

could I draw breath 

before plunging again

Conversation with a Condemned Cricket

 The three-legged, poisoned cricket in the kitchen
greets me, all accusation—Why 
the tempting toxin chamber
—was not my life already so
much more painful than yours? 

It was only, I reply, that 
I couldn’t bear your singing
—not when I wanted to cradle
 —so quietly—
 my sorrow.

Like this, he said, I

cannot sing.

It was only was only the echo

of unbearable should-have-been 

you must have been hearing. 

horribleunfairthing

Try this: think of the most

    horribleunfairthing:

no, worse than that...

WORSE

Now ask why?

    Whyshouldthateverhappen!

    to someone good?

    someone loved?

    

Just because hemayhavebeenproud?

    Just because you may have believed in him

        a little like an Idol?

 

Can mistakes of the heart

        like those butterfly wings of ChaOs tHeORy

            really set off such a 

do    

     wn

                wa

                         rd

                                                                

                            s

                                 p

                            ri

                         a

                               l?

Now stop asking why.

Because you can't fathom that answer.

Yet.

both too much a child

and too unwilling to be childish

It's the most

horribleunfairthing

and it 

just is.

A Rebuttal to Emily

 Hope is the thing with falsehoods

        that lies and lies and lies

and no matter what you feed it

        continually dies

It tells you there's a future

        so you'll get up and try again

It claims that something better

        is just up around the bend

And even as you're dying at

        the "something better's" feet

hope is the pernicious thing

        that says you'll be good to eat

eaters of souls

if it is true the war demons are loose in Ukraine
and Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and South Sudan

(the list is longer) you'd think they'd be glutted

with souls

if there were death gods, you'd think they'd be groaning

with the tribute paid them in panic and anguish (but also)

in quiet deliberations in the hallowed halls 

of justice (so called)

but there, where the battle for the lives of the not-yet-seen

(who haven't even emerged for the delectation of death eaters)

is taking place, we come face to face (with the brightness 

of certain mirrors and missiles)

with only ourselves who crave all this death

Love Conquers All

Love conquers all.

I'll say again:

love conquers all,

except for pain,

and floods of rain,

and blighted grain...

It can't stop that.

Love always wins.

If didn't win, 

then not the end!

Except for when

we lose all friends,

and divorce trends...

It can't top those.

Oh, love trumps hate;

it's power so great

that love trumps hate...

except for fate,

matters of state,

that one ingrate...

There love falls flat.

But love lives on!

No love is lost

if love lives on

unless there's cost,

a killing frost,

or gales have tossed...

Then love gives out.

Love covers doubt,

illumines lies

and wipes them out

except white lies,

or broken ties

that ostracize...

No fixing that.

Love conquers all.

Except some stuff

that's rather rough...

Love wins enough...

I call Love's bluff.

Can you see it from where you're standing?

Can you see it from where you're standing?

Can you see a door? A gate? A hole in the air?

Can you tell what's on the other side

of that nearing portal?

Is it the lavender fields of Provence?

Could you walk into it now, breathe it in,

hear the gracious hum of bees?

Is it a waving field of wheat closer to home;

its golden susurrus murmuring like the sea?

Are redwings darting above windrows of hay?

Are jays bluing the crystal fields of December?

Or is it a workshop with a kiln

and a clock that wants repair?

Do you smell hay

or snow

or sawdust

or book pages

 

or beeswax?

Is it a cathedral

or a classroom?

Will you walk in and lecture?

Will you pick up a hymnal and sing?

Easter Thoughts on Dying

 As Paul told the Christians
    of Corinth, "Behold,
I tell you a mystery. We

will not all sleep but

we will all be changed..."

My beloved ones 

have long been sleeping--

a hybernation of decades

since my grandfather

was last awake.

And I? I have been

the doorway

of a new generation.

My hips widened,

my face softened,

my jaw firmed.

My father fell asleep

and we have been 

changed--

my hair become a trail

of white stars,

my cheeks, the veil of time.

In time, my husband slept,

and my mother,

my dearest friends,

my hopes and

aspirations.

Until all my moments

pause on the cusp 

of midnight.

I close my eyes to dream

a dream long awaited....

And when they open

on an endless April sky,

I know you!

You, my beloved one,

who has been alseep

so long!

You woke before me

and you've been waiting.

And I know you.

Your face grinning

down at me, I have never seen.

A boy's face, unlined,

creased with laughter,

but I know you--

my father, freed from frailty,

unstructured from the strictures

of fatherhood,

free

finally to love 

without dependence

or the pall of parting,

you take my hand

and we run, a boy and girl,

into the golden wheat

ringing with the laughter

of all the children

gathered to God. 

Daffodils

The daffodils are here again, dearest. 

Aren't daffodils supposed to be

the ushers of hope

springing full grown 

from the mind of God?

But do you know what I did 

when you told me what I already knew? 

I ran outside.

I fled your tidings into a field 

filled with daffodils,

those bright blooms now

the Flower of the Knowlege of Good and Evil

that brought death into my garden.

bitter synesthesia

have you seen those videos:

someone; maybe

        a teenage boy, an elderly man

                a seeming hard creature of hidden emotions

is given a pair of glasses with dark lenses

he weeps. he weeps

suddenly seeing color

for the first time ever. 

his tears never fail

to move my tears.

i never knew words had color

until cruel dis

         ease stole yours away

and gave me this 

    bitter

        synesthesia.

out of the world

        slowly bled your words

                into black silence.

                        what will ever

                                show me colors again?

it turns out that we always die alone

it turns out that

we always die alone

and those whose hearts

are with ours

die alone

beside us

all of us together

in isolated

anguish

holding

our breaths as

you breath out 

your last

I finally just said it--

I finally just said it--

what I was thinking--

what she was thinking--

what you have been thinking?

I know there was never

any guarantee but

I really thought we had ten years.

Why the hell don't we 

have ten more years?