Tag: loss

personal, poetry

The Best Life

jacqueline gordon

When I find myself on the cliffside,
the seagulls having their way with me,
I imagine that last sunset we watched together.
At least here,

there is something to be felt.
Their many cries, some kind of chorus
of violence. All a part of earth’s cold order.
Not endless – nothing is endless –

but something
immortalized, nevertheless. 
If a tree falls in the woods
and there are no birds left 

to remember it – all its wailing
washed away to the seas –
it still made its sound – it’s last
gasp for air, last grasp for footing.

All of me wants all of that –
something left to give to the land.

poetry

Thoughts From the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area

jacqueline gordon

If I close my eyes
and just listen – listen
for the gulls – I can
make pretend
I’m tasting ocean air.
Here,
in quiet February,
in this rainswept winter
wonder, I could believe the green
will last
at least a few eternities.
I watch as feathers
cut
the crystalline stillness.
I watch cattails
withering,
but we know it’s a slow decay –
slow enough
that we might see
without seeing –
I watch the birds
fall
out of the sky
by half-lives.
I watch the frog ponds
beginning to boil
away
until one day,
we will wake up and see
that a forty-day flood
has left in its wake
a desert.
I think
that’s what happened to us…
or at least to you.
I watch my own hands
turn water –
turn vapor –
and I think how you
too may have burned away in the sun –
burned away
slowly
as I watched
and did nothing.
I wish
that was true, and that you
couldn’t stop it.
But the birds tell me different.
No… You are still
breathing
somewhere,
just on the other side of these sand-flooded plains.
You might as well live
across the ocean.

poetry

Arachnophobia

jacqueline gordon

After
you swept me out,
I made a home in the rafters.

It never
seemed like
a place to call home.

But spin
enough white
woolen blankets and

anything
can look like Home.

You know,
it’s rather nice
up here. Because

up here,
I can see you
from afar, and much

more
clearly than
before. Up here,

sunlight
doesn’t burn
the skin you made

so tender.
Up here, the only
webs that can ensnare

are
those I spin
myself. I feel a tug

at my
throat. It’s
Growing ever tighter,

but
still I’ll keep
spinning so that

I will
never be
tempted to crawl

down from
the rafters
again.

poetry

The Speed of Light

jacqueline gordon

Disappear with me into the amber grass
that chafes our backs. Last time we looked up
from here, the ice beneath us chiseled out tattoos.
We still have matching ones (at least I do).

Usually, I disappear alone into the weeds
and dream they are flowers. I feel the seasons
spinning around me, but I concentrate on stars
which twirl eternally in their Viennese waltz.

I know that some of them returned to dust
a million years ago. I know that right now,
some are gasping in a vacuum and choking
on dark matter. But I can’t tell from here.

I wonder what you’re thinking. If you long
to return to the sky like I do. If you even
remember all the constellations we made…
or if you care about them, anyway.

You aren’t looking at me, your eyes
are gazing into the depths of dark matter.
At last, I speak. “You see that star?
I think that’s the one we wished on.”

You shrug. “It’s probably
dead already,” you say,
and walk away.