Author: Elizabeth Maynard

Did anyone ask your name
as you stood, drink in hand
longed to pull
a phone from your pocket
rabbit from a hat?

I hear your call to prayer
You say sit here
pat the cushion
run your hand across
the blades of my back
like I belong

My favorite red-breasted bird
comes to sip again from last night's rain
turns his head to listen
sing out to his kind
never once distracted
by this strange creature
beyond the glass

Midnight and I wait
under electric light to
imagine today

Some poet wrote about
leaving home to find it
Here at the end of the world
I see the bright beacon of it
long for the simplicity
of a life I understand

I worked all day on things urgent
important, but in the end neither
hours wasted on someone else's 
imagined priorities
I did not listen to the questions
of my own bruised heart
her longings for peace
for home

I peer into these other lives
through windows large and small
younger, I thought everyone happier
older, I despair for us all
We lose hope
I lose hope
as I watch our solemn march
to the ends of the earth

Trying to convince myself
that you are kind or good
took too much
Now that I see your character
it is much easier
to let you go, let you fall

How the days slip now
one to another until
I have lost them all

I read your work
felt the weight and sadness of it
someone thought it brilliant
though I don't understand
why I pay what I fretted to earn
to feel worse about the world