LONER IV
It's sad how...
We lose the people we treasure most.
But then,
Even Roses lose petals.
Poems on the topic: loss
Poems on the topic “loss” on Poets.by.
Wakening
it's a stormy day the glimpsed
sun ivory light through
leaden gray.
It was always your eyes
i thought of their
sky blue when glad
so sun-filled clear.
you were also the wind
the endless veils
and clarity after
a storm
with you I felt - yes,
desperate sometimes
but seen.
now your absence says
it's gray today
Initials
a boy carved his initials
way up high
I'll be a knight he said
a poet lover sage
but they cut
the tree down
he worked dreamed mated
gave birth and lost a child
to death
had a profession comfort
used wood to burn
cosy night fires
flame-coloured flowers
and letters flew
around the room
chastising burning
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.
The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.
No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.
The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.
My Father
My father is 88.
Yesterday I got a letter from him.
He said he has not been feeling very well lately
for in these last six months
he has lost four of his friends
and three of his teeth.
The Cord
you don't call
I'm half without other half
raw where you tore off
the telephone cord umbilical
hangs lifeless
no voice sings furry
humour
that thing's a corpse
vibrates no meanings
it just hangs there
It Is Quiet Out There
It is quiet out there now. She
Takes her hat, stick and forage bag,
Into which she slips her pruners, then
Slides her feet into green clogs, feeling
Quite exurban-agrarian, ready to look
Under brush piles and into cottonwoods --
In every place that might consent to harbor
Even a hint of birds' music. They have flown,
The silence tells her; those that haven't died.
Out along the roadside she waves to cars,
Understanding her neighbors have to drive,
Then pockets up her apples, rose hips, leaves
That now are turning away from green: cat's ear,
High mallow, chicory, plantain, sow thistle, her
Ears pricked for passing flights of geese.
Really, thinks she to herself, there ought
Separation
Round the circle of her garden she walks, and stops
again, taking in, as one absent from her own
senses yet unwilling to forgo their gifts,
the half-dimmed light of a low, prepubescent
moon, its influence on lingering clouds,
some few stars brave enough to compete with
mercury vapor or halogen or tungsten,
and taking in also the pungent garlic border,
its enclosure of bean vines, celery, snap peas:
celebratory things, even in this half-light,
this dew of forgotten hours. Her feet,
though well shod, warn her of night, by noting
slow seep of dew round toes and heels.
Her hand, brushing wet night-blooming
jasmine, shrinks from chill. These, and trees
she has encouraged -- apple, plum, pear, cherry,
Sixty-Four
Searching for a lost
crew-woman, we
forded three creeks
in deepening fog.
It was ourselves
we lost then.
Sixty
I did not know
love had gone;
I stood by the stairs
a long time, then
walked away.
Fifty-One
Is this the last
day we may walk
together? Then
I suppose I
must gaze
straight ahead.
Thirty-Two
I remember you
alive, finding
red salmon
in a pool. They whirled,
autumn leaves —
no place to go.
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