(for Rita)
I wrote a poem when you died;
read it at your funeral,
making final revisions
in the church courtyard
next to a chain-smoking priest;
but words are never enough;
too shallow;
trifles for the busker;
toward a debt never repaid,
the blinding light of reality
crashing through my soul
like the word of the godhead;
the life you led
going against your grain,
trading habit for
habitual motherhood,
living with the strength
of gravity;
I wear your memory
long after I cast aside
your daughter,
long after you grew cold
below the ground;
speaking to me as though
life is a stage and the
curtains never close;
taking care of me
from beyond time;
I will never forget
the forge in your heart.
You knew what it took
to keep love alive,
and you knew that love
fades from the heart
like a passing sun’s shadow
and you tried to tell your children
but they already knew
that they would toss it away
like a child with a ball
covered in mud,
until they were pulled up by the roots
and we were left
with impatience,
pride,
fight-or-flight,
leaving a garden trampled
and torn, no one to turn
their eyes toward the madness
of your tumor;
I don’t know who I am,
what I am,
but I know you remain with me,
even after everyone abandoned the plot,
you remain,
knowing these fields are never barren,
smiling in the face of chaos;
this is life, you said,
everything that stinks is life
and everything that lives
is not always alive
and now,
everything that dies
is not always silent.
Published in Collected Poems, 2016
©2016, Dan Schell, Flex Your Head Books