Two years ago, my father
Died. What love we had
Hidden under misery,
Weighed down with years
Of silence.
And now,
Maybe the poem can free
Us, maybe the poem can express
The love and let the rest
Slide to the earth as the snow
Does now, freeing the tree
Of its burden.
To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That’s crudely put, but . . .
If we’re not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?
Time to shut up.
Voltaire said the secret
Of being boring
Is to say everything.
And yet I held
Back about love
All those years:
Talking about death
Insistently, even
As I was alive;
Talking about loss
As if all was loss,
As if the world
Did not return
Each morning.
As if the beloved
Didn’t long for us.
No wonder I go on
So. I go on so
Because of the wonder.
~ from Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved
(Copper Canyon Press, 2005)
