Black
characters on
a
white screen
leave
little room for emotion,
but
this email says it all.
Strained.
Seeking.
I
wail.
I
begin the business of finding out.
Words
are thin.
A
veneer of syllables
across
the surface of a
life,
fading.
Bleeding
on the brain.
And
then the call to confirm
what
I already know.
My
mothers' voice
sifts
compassion,
wonder,
and
sorrow
into
my interrupted dreams.
Too
early to rise,
too
late for sleep.
Each cell abuzz,
a mitochondrial
earthquake.
Rifting.
I book flights
and cancel,
cancel,
cancel
everything else.
Vacation plans evaporate.
Library books return unread.
I sleep, I think,
curled around my partner's shirt
as if those empty
arms
could offer comfort.
Reading a Photo of Gail Reading
ReplyDeleteYour eyes hold mine
In this time since then
As if the moment were. Still.
Shown here in pastel
But then in electric blue,
As you let flow
With your low voice
Those soft images that
Draw in the ether between
Me and my mind, unfolding
Slowly until the last line
Opens a whole new milieu
And we rush to meet
What you already knew.
Dear Jeny,
ReplyDeleteComment 1 is to share about an earier time when Gail was in her prime. A moment of my viewing a photo of her reading--she in California, I 'down under' but not-so-far from each other.
This comment is to say that EMERGENCY-Gail is a brave posting about that frozen moment when the 'wail' welled up and escaped from your heart to your lips and into the air to join the cluster of such sorrowful sounds uttered by uncountable beings in this Saha world. That high, whining, involuntary expelling of breath that tries to make grief bearable.
When that moment passes, your poem moves again, beginning the process that brought you to be by Gail's side with your mother and me, with Rudite, Laila, Cynthia and others close to Gail.
How many times once you arrived did we hear someone else's wail over the phone or in a room or in their own poem when they learned of Gail's passing?
Jeny, you write it well:
Words are thin.
A veneer of syllables
across the surface of a
life, fading.
Bleeding on the brain.
Intense and visceral imagery. Sad moment creates a fine poem. Pain into art.
ReplyDelete