Grieving

March 25, 2023

CONCEIVE OF THIS

No child, no youth
wants to imagine the moment
of his or her conception.
Now, that is the moment of personhood
in some places, a moment when
two cells become one and is
a life of its own, but it isn’t
the convergence of sperm and ovum
we avoid, but the act leading to it.
When you are an adoptee
and only later in life discover
your now dead birthparents
that moment, that scene
is a small void in your life
among larger voids you want to,
but cannot ever, seem to fill,
so it is left to your imagination
of time, place, circumstances
and ultimately action, but you ensure
that scene ends moments before conception.

March 12, 2023

ONE MORE, MORE

That there is another shooting
comes as no surprise,
it is commonplace now, expected
and there are only questions:
how many this time, what
kind of weapon was used, what
motivated the shooter to do it.

What does it say when we define
mass killing as requiring three
or more dead bodies in one place.

The body of the single victim
is no less dead than the mass killed
but death by gun is so commonplace,
we roll right by it unless we know
the victim or the location holds
special significance to us.

So we have ceded our humanity
to the Almighty Weapon, all
we have are prayers, for we
are now too tired to be angry, and
mass anger is our only hope.

February 16, 2023

A MOMENT

It is 1952, April, and I
am handed to the woman.
I am wrapped in a thin blanket,
the tall man is standing beside her.
I do not recall this, but this
is how it must have happened,
she finally a mother, he
a father despite infertility.
I do not recall her, the woman
who perhaps never held me
once I exited her body, who
hid me for nine months.
I mourn her now, knowing
she acted out of love, with hope
for me, but only the headstone
is her touch on my hand.

First appeared in Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Volume 12, Fall 2022

February 10, 2023

FINAL TEST

If he were graded solely
on effort, he would have
received a B+ but life doesn’t
allow such a narrow view.

He had no father, no model
so he stumbled through looking
at others, unsure which were right
which were botching the job.

He bought an ancient first
baseman’s glove from Goodwill
the only left-handed glove they had
and I taught him to use it.

When we went camping
with the Boy Scouts, he the new
Scoutmaster, we made sure
to build the fire and set up his tent.

He’s been gone almost
four years and I remember all
of the things he tried and
for those I still mourn him.

February 4, 2023

PFFFT

As I age now I am
aware that the tether
to my earliest memories
has grown thin, stretched
by time until I know it will,
of necessity, soon give way.

And so I spend spare
moments trying to sort
through my life as I recall
it, selecting those moments
that bear the effort of retethering
so that time would be better
served weakening others.

But the hidden beauty,
I know, is that when a memory
is gone, has fallen away, it often
takes its shadow along, so there
is no hint even of its prior existence,
and you don’t mourn what
you never had, even if you did.

January 19, 2023

SMALL REFLECTION

It is that moment when the moon
is a glaring crescent,
slowly engulfed by
the impending night—
when the few clouds give out
their fading glow
in the jaundiced light
of the sodium arc street lamp.
It nestles the curb—at first a small bird—
when touched, a twisted piece of root.

I want to walk into the weed-strewn
aging cemetery, stand in the shadow
of the expressway, peel
the uncut grass from around her headstone.
I remember
her arthritic hands clutching mine,
in her dark, morgueish apartment, smelling
of vinyl camphor borsht.
I saw her last in a hospital bed
where they catalog and store
those awaiting death, stared
at the well-tubed skeleton
barely indenting starched white sheets.
She smiled wanly and whispershouted
my name—I held my ground
unable to cross the river of years
unwilling to touch
her outstretched hand. She had
no face then, no face now, only
an even fainter smell of age
of camphor of lilac of must.

Next to the polished headstone
lies a small, twisted root.
I wish it were a bird
I could place gently
on the lowest branch of the old maple
that oversees her slow departure.

First published in Rattle #23, Spring 2005

January 12, 2023

VICTOR

In our time
of never-ending war,
punctured by the briefest
lulls we now call peace,
someone, someones
more likely, will talk
about whom will be
the victor, to whom
shall go the spoils.
Bierce, that perpetual
cynic, reminded us
that peace was a period
of cheating between
two periods of fighting.
But no one pauses
to consider that
in any war there are
no true victors
only the victims
unwillingly offered up
in sacrifice to delusion.

First appeared in Jimson Weed, Volume XLI, New Series Vol. 25, Number 2, Fall 2022
https://view.publitas.com/university-of-virginias-college-at-wise/jimson-weed-fall-2022/

December 14, 2022

LIFE, ABBREVIATION

Arrival noted, 11:30 P.M.
delivery normal, baby
prepared for agency, mother
released in two days, baby
to foster care, then
to adoptive parents.

No memories, save one,
a fall, bathroom, head
bleeding, black and white
floor tile, radiator harder
than child’s skull.

Now 70, the same person,
a lying mirror each day,
a small cemetery, West
Virginia, a headstone
a mother finally,
a life of mourning.

December 3, 2022

WE FIND OURSELVES

We are wholly innocent
we are wracked with guilt.
There is nothing we did,
but what is there that we
did not do, that we
should have done, that we
might have said so it would
never have happened, or
happened less, or happened
despite everything we did?

We carry our innocence
as a badge, we wear our guilt
as an albatross around our neck,
dragging us, slowing us,
forcing us to acknowledge
our guilt, plead our innocence.

In the streets of Ukraine
the war, the destruction continues
as we, the innocent, the guilty
can only watch in horror.

November 25, 2022

LISA, ONCE

A phone call, a lawyer’s clerk:
Can you tell me about Lisa Landesman?
I pause for that is a name I have
not heard in forty years, save
in a poem I once wrote,
now long forgotten.

She was my sister for two
or three weeks, adopted like I was,
and then Mike, my then father
dropped dead of a massive
heart attack and she was soon gone.

We were Federal adoptions, our
birthplace under Federal law, not
getting its own for two decades,
and her adoption wasn’t final so she
was re-placed and never replaced.

She won’t inherit as I will from
my cousin who died having no
siblings, spouse, children,
nieces or nephews, who left
no will, who left only kind memories.