Second Place Winner, June 2002 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, June 2002

COMMUNION WITH THE DECEASED
MJM
(Wild Poetry Forum)

Tell me something. What good could have come
from this? I'm prone in a wildflower
field in Eagle, Colorado. I have bourbon
in my glass and I don't drink. I feel queasy.

There is a gathering of people behind me under
a rented canopy, the white ones used for weddings
and times like these. All of them knew you better
than they know me. They carry canapés in their hands,

stories of your exploits on their lips, undigested grief
in that tender spot below the breastbone. I'm speaking
to the knapweed and they pretend there's nothing
wrong with that because they've already decided

I'm deranged. What could I have told her about her
late father that she wouldn't have already known?
That a blackball in the bloodstream is as inheritable
as your fear of water, your love of Escher, your proclivity

for laughter? That we ignored the risks of genetic disease,
birthed her anyway? What good could have come
of her being? Better to know we loved her well
enough to leave well enough alone. It is mid June.

The lupine are late to bloom this high in the hills
and there is no child who requires an explanation
of love and death. Nor to lose to them either. No stranger
at a wake need lead her away from a mother who lays

in the dirt. All this is easier without her
than with her. It is, isn't it? Speak to me.

Judge Sheila Bender's comment: “I admire this poem for the way it conveys grief and the emotional universe in which that grief exists, so isolated and so penetrating. The poem captures the 'what if' moment that permeates the speaker's heart.”