Author: Elizabeth Maynard

Friends:  one black, one white
speak Chinese to each other
over hot tacos

Wordless we drift through
each other hoping syntax
will at last arrive

You snap your fingers
to mark time
confine my attention
say you correct
but you wound
these marks pale
and tomorrow disappear

You will always need me

Oh how your fear lies

Here is the nest I built:
all paper and ink
tiny slips of words
whisps of memory
and the occasional shiny thing
to inspire and delight

Here the dead do not rest
but remember light and air
redressed in linen
lighter each year
We sing and pass the bottle
but I pray:
Please let my bones rest
just there under the warm earth
recall me, if you must
with some other song

The night before your plane
lifts and parts the sky
I want only to hold you
imagine you always here
chant some incantation
adorn you with medals
to preserve and protect
but the most loving thing
is to let you take wing

Morning now breaking
a new light uplifting but
too early to see

A women's studies professor
to whom I was once married
stopped short a conversation
about the running of our home
to implore a change of subject
to something, anything important

Loving you today is
sugar on the floor
dirty hands on clean towels
instructions retraced
for skipped steps
and laughing mouths full
of this sweet advent

This sweet white solace
stand-in for love's deep longing
leaves me, emptier