Seven miles down the dirt road of your mind
and cancer was the diagnosis.
Not lilacs, not your sweet chemical powder smell.
I close my eyes; I’m six.
I don’t remember being six but I feel
somewhere wholly brought into what I can’t consciously know
I felt.
I’ve lost you somewhere out in the world;
my mouth opens and my chest is so full
a pain dies somewhere, turns to water;
my eyes flow and my respiration caught on that hook
is left in disrepair.
Your coffin.
It was laid out like a sarcophagus, some goddess symbolic
of the strength of your discontent
carved on its cover, replacing your face with placid fortitude;
the words on the underside, facing you
tore me down, they were so true, but not of you.
So appropriate, but only for the death of love.
And when
the fox broke in,
stole all my concentration, all my story,
I let him go lest he should bite me;
I let him know the taste of all my comfort.
And so. Even so.
We can know the meadow or the lake path in the spring
when all of spring has woken everything,
or we can stare intently at each other’s down
and break apart the spaces of our air and warmth;
the respiration and the beat which pulls us to our heart;
our every sure compulsion to go North.
Natalie Easton is a free verse poet who lives in Connecticut. She has been writing poetry for sixteen years and finds it to be like sushi; many people don’t quite have the taste for it (and that may be what’s wrong with the world). She enjoys writing in dark and neglected corners with an old Royal typewriter.
Powerful, powerful work.