death – Page 2 – Press Send Poetry

Rows of No Smoking Lights

Captain, turn off the seat belt sign
so only rows of no smoking lights run above.

Secure us passengers, upright us as
we wait in this obdurate silence.

Sleep eyes open to a hangover, dream
rocking against a tiny dark window.

Lighted wing belays the illusion, we are
underwater (again) in a primal world.

Feel this pressurized weight force
the lights to run on. Staring at

them blurs life into one long line
A long hallway I too will walk someday.

[revised from 2010 – about a plane ride home from Mexico to say goodbye to my dying grandmother]

Quietly Disappearing (To Mia)

Friend, I asked the great poets but for all their flowery words

They couldn’t capture your breathless manner of speaking.

I searched the sea and the ocean but they just kept repeating,

(Repeating) and I beseeched the birds but they just kept circling and

I was dizzy; a statue? too stiff, unfeeling.

Flowers? too trite with grieving – I went back pleading with the poets

“Write me a new constellation in the sky and call it Mia!” but they
Gave me cold cracked bells tolling, so unappealing–

More fitting – I on a marble stoop sitting, my beer streaming out,

Watching bubbles slowing, exhales burying a sidewalk steaming,
All… all… quietly disappearing.

untitled (quilts always warm)

you don’t have to remind me of that
orange and brown
soft knit afghan quilt that
matched nothing
in our house
but in theirs —

the olive green
and the hanging plates
and that day
laying on the hardwood waiting

no games, no pick up sticks
only a new jewelry box
and my reliable Alley cat
in a house creaking with grief

dismissed
gathering stones
in the drain pipe
that felt like a river bank
little sister in hand
knowing more than they knew –
quilts always warm.

(poem from Jan 2011)

The Weight (haiku)

lie down in flowers,
how your body is now the weight
of dirt blocking sun.

a return to flight

Over and over,
I’ve been that
(wilted flowers in hand)
silhouette to a setting sun
on a dried-out hill
saying stoic goodbyes.

But when I close my eyes,
(from my earliest
slippery seconds),
I have always seen
a return to flight,
my remains scattered by the aching hands
of my family back to the
soft wet arms
of a briny sea.

how I’ll fly then —
as gently as cresting waves in
warmly breaking sunlight.

the silence of snow

fresh snow has a silence
like the last sigh before
every last cell goes dark
and the soul drifts on; like
how even a tiny gust can
send these mortal flurries
skyward.

no longer even a specter,
your memory has lost edges the way
a dried tear evaporates back into nothing
edges become a mist
elemental, invisible, and
while i no longer recognize you
icy hands move the hair from my eyes
while sleep alone steals time.

loss of an old man

we didn’t know
you fought in World War II
until the Taps was played
and the flag folded
and the regrets
piled up like so many
quiet moments alone.

lost obiturary card

Someone died. That much is clear.
I know from the Jesus
card in the puddle
on the street.

With enough rain – His face,
such mortal paper,
will streak eagerly
into primordial colors,
and someone, somewhere,
will reach an empty pocket
and weep.

estate sale

the first thing to go –
an Orioles picture to a man who
played for the Brooklyn Dodgers
who would, later, give it to his son;
and a couple of porcelain cats
already cherished
in the small hands of a mentally
strained woman;
the printing press and its letters
to a young artist,
and books to budding chefs –
the bedding went to Hispanics, lacking,
and I took an elephant necklace, molded carefully in gold
with tiny bells on each shoe.

memories leave their objects
and barter now
for the flecks of color in the irises of our eyes.

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