Poetry
Stay Close By
Stay close by and
not just in my dreams
I long to see how the years have
sculpted your face and how the love
of those who have loved you
has brought warmth to the palm of your hand
I was once among them
*Winner, Desert Ridge Marketplace and The Poetry Project, Phoenix AZ, September 2022
August 25th
You left me on this day in 2009
It was an equally spectacular one to this
with a stunning blue sky
and the brightest of sunshine
and a slight breeze making it not too hot
for a southern California day in late August
It was no surprise at all that you chose
a beautiful day for your journey
You held my hand through so many things
for so many years
Yet in your suffering I held yours for merely four
So brief those years seem to me now
Yet how drawn out they must have seemed to you
Short or long the time was never wasted on us
And when I held your hand for the very last time
I whispered “Mom, if you can hear me, I’m here”
Then just like always you waited for me
to leave first before you would go
And though you were indeed finally
ready for us to part
I was not
We Mourn The Year
We mourn the year
We mourn its death and its cruel bequests
of loss of life, of broken spirit,
of painful isolation, of debilitating doubt,
of fractured faith, of paralyzing fear,
of unbridled hatred, of absence of
understanding
We stare at the calendar and anticipate
the day when light penetrates darkness
And with the light, we seek the hope we
thought betrayed us
We mourn, though it may be with anger
We mourn, as we concede our frailty
We mourn, because we must
And with the hope that lies beneath the
rubble of all that we’ve endured,
because we must, we rise.
To survive you must tell stories.
U M B E R T O E C O