“A meditation on death and loss. A 20 line, free-verse poem, unrhymed, in the style of John Ashbury's poem "Fragment" in The Double Dream of Soring.”

A dusk-blue window, quieter than the unheard  
cricket’s song, unscrolls in the half-closed hallway—  
Rows of shoes left mute, the umbrella’s dark rest  
by the door, all conjuring a shadowy absence  
both heavy and shy.  
  
It is not a tolling bell, this loss—  
more a gentle subtraction:  
the aftertaste of rain in summer,  
chairs at angles, the impression of you  
slightly hollowing out the fabric of day.  
  
A list of groceries you won’t return for,  
the unread spine blurring in the windowlight,  
hands grown patient threading seeds  
into the soil of memory,  
only the very oldest words fit now.  
  
Sometimes, one coherent moment—  
grief’s soft pastry of clocks and rain—  
breaks down the silence,  
as if what is gone might spill itself  
across linoleum, sunlight,  
to keep fading and continuing in us,  
partial, braided, necessary.

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