my only brother, Joe, died the day after I wrote this, at age 78. perhaps this is why so many of my poems recently have concerned death. voyage well my brother…
enough
a poem arrived last night
so heavy with death I couldn’t lift it
and I couldn’t in good conscience
drop it on anybody else.
so for now, there’s just this –
an unseasonably warm spring day
robins building a nest on the porch
the constant quiet joy
of the good woman I married
nearly forty years ago. And for now
this is enough.
enough to hold me warm at night,
enough to allow me to ignore,
for a time, the pulsing sadness
that flows beneath the surface
of this happiness,
like blood beneath the skin
carrying its own form of richness
throughout this aging body,
even though I know that one day
this blood will stop, and with it must end
all of the sadness, all of the joy,
leaving only a space,
a sharp inhalation,
then a long vanishing sigh.
© 2020 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com