Sometimes chance is weird but kind,
as when I am walking with Andrea by chance,
and grief escapes from the home,
and sneaks up behind
me, an old woman with milky eyes,
limbs stiff with years,
hobbles to my back door unannounced,
dragging her bag of gruesome memories
clamping her crooked fingers
round my neck
popping the cork of my unruly mouth:
MY GOD, THAT BOY LOOKS JUST LIKE–
Abort, abort.
After all these years I know just what not to do,
when grief shows up out of the blue
eyes of a little boy laughing,
doppelganger in a stroller,
not fall at his feet
not touch his face
not put my lips to his cheek
not whisper my son’s name and weep.
Better this hovering young mother think me rude
than to finish my unfinished sentence.
Better let her live innocent as snow
than tell her hair can turn to straw
a toddler’s eyes can go dark
death can come
even to a boy like that
and reincarnate fifteen years later in a boy like that,
and have to say I’m sorry to ruin your day
when I’m not,
not really.
Sometimes chance is weird but kind,
as when by chance I am walking with Andrea,
whose son happens to lie next to mine,
grave companions, you might say
clean picked bones shaped like two little boys,
tiny metacarpals touching,
tibias, fibulas,
sacral bones lying still
in their adjacent tombs, beneath their sacred marble stones.
Sometimes chance is weird but kind,
as when Andrea takes my hand,
leads me away, a bewildered child,
and grief hobbles along behind us, trying to keep up.
Larry would have been thirty-one, Andrea whispers,
Michael would have been eighteen, I say.
Toddlers into men,
even the gods of imagination cannot make that leap.
I do not tell Andrea that sometimes
the gods of imagination animate our boys,
and they rise from the dead and live
pink-cheeked to play
next to the tree in the sunlight,
no affront to the blue sky,
grass, insects
even the birds.
Sometimes I think I liked it better
when grief was young and potent,
weighed four thousand pounds,
screamed and screeched like a carnival troll,
slashed at my skin and cells with its long claws,
hissed like the villain in a silent movie.
At least I knew where grief was then,
It didn’t shuffle and creep up behind me
like an old woman with clouded eyes
begging for attention and pity
with her bag of hoary stuff–
her milky tubes,
pumping machines,
white coats
switching eyes
This is a truly moving poem.
This is one of the most touching heartfelt pieces I have read in a long time. I am so grateful you are so in touch with yourself. Hard and painful work and wonderful expression.