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Death
This Little Bit I Am Trying To Hold
Poems About Departures
Listen to the poets in this month’s special poetry section read their poems about leaving and letting go. To listen, click the play button below each title in the article.
I will leave you, / and I will / leave the sudden // darkness of afternoon thunderstorms / and I will leave / the rain and its patience in shaping mountains
— from “I Will Leave,” by Michael Bazzett
I am here to translate my father’s death / into fruit. Something that can be held. To bring / it up to your lips the way I spooned strawberry / yogurt up to his and said to him the word “Eat.” / There was no use, in the end. There was no hunger.
— from “I Did What I Could to Keep This,” by Peter Markus
Tonight, because all matter is dissolving, you & I / are being gradually undressed by the universe — // silk & wool molecules mingling with cells / rising from skin like souls
— from “Everything,” by Terry Lucas
November 202320, 40, 60, 80
Middle-aged people shrink, crease, fade, and, if they’re lucky, slowly lose the desire to be noticed, the way we once lost our childhood taste for Necco Wafers or Pez. My desire to be seen is gradually being replaced by the desire to see: the faces of those I love, the cardinal in the bush, the socks of the woman with multiple sclerosis who swims at the Y.
November 2023
Local Haunts
Colin Dickey On Place And Meaning In Ghost Stories
I think every place is haunted to one degree or another. And there will always be people who have a feeling when they visit a place, or believers who will say that they’ve seen something.
September 2023
Lawn Skeletons
As far as I know, the first house in the neighborhood to adopt a year-round skeleton display was a small Cape Cod a couple of blocks from me. The skeletons sat side by side, day after day, in their Adirondack chairs, holding hands as if starring in a Cialis commercial.
September 2023
Sunbeams
September 2023It’s hard for me to believe that I will die. Because I’m bubbling in a frigid freshness. My life is going to be very long because each instant is. The impression is that I’m still to be born.
The Tunnel
It started with the mouse in the grass by the sidewalk, ants / crawling on its face. Aidan wanted to touch it. I drew him back / and held him. We talked about the gray fur and the tiny ants. He asked / if the mouse was going to go home to his mama and daddy. / No, I told him, the mouse won’t get to go home again.
September 2023What I Don’t Tell My Wife
There are many things I don’t tell my wife of ten years: Because she has asked me not to. Because she carries her own burdens. Because she has told me mine are too much.
August 2023Total Solar
We took our kids to City Hall Plaza / with its dead-on view / of South Mountain to watch / the moon eclipse our sun / in a certain way we’d been told / wouldn’t happen again / in our lifetime unless we traveled / to a far-off part of the globe.
August 2023A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
August 2023
