(V)

Four Months Now

Four months now.
The nights are thick with absence, dense with truancy,
every now and then a break,
blurred vision dried, driven by nature’s call,
she’s sitting in her familiar chair
sharing a laugh and then as quickly
to disappear,
the empty fog pulling in after her,
the trailing silence crying for a sound, a voice
to soften reality’s harsh claim,
but the only voice he hears is the sound of tears
making their way down his cheeks
into his gray beard.
Some older men, “widowers” they call them,
die of broken hearts.
It’s easy to see why as he tries to mend his.
He has buried her ashes in the earth
and now, to start a new life,
he buries her pictures in a book
as if the closed pages
will shorten time’s slow mercy.

 

From Best Poets of 2013

< Previous Poem	Next Poem >