In this room’s winterlight the travail of
a letter to a new widow. Solemn,
the increasing enterprise of age.
I stutter. Consoling words come slow,
seem false, as if spoken on a stage.
It would be easier to send flowers.
I think of her closing her husband’s eyelids
and I look up. Siberian snow hesitated,
then parachuted into our garden
for hours, confiscating yesterday’s
footprints. Shall I send flowers?
But now my wife, unaware in the far kitchen,
suddenly sings, captivating me,
my pen mid-air above the muffled page.
When we were young, tremulant with Spring,
often off-key she’d sing her repertoire –
dateless folk songs, dance tunes dated.
In her Pears-suds bath I’d hear her,
in the Morris Minor with our kids.
I must return to my hiemal letter.
Sing on love, as once you did, sing and sing
for past youth, for hunger unabated.
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