First Place Winner, July 2001 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

First Place Winner, July 2001

HERE IS A POEM THAT SPEAKS OF LOSS
Tara A. Elliott
(Moontown Café)

I sit on this bus reading a book
written six years after your death.
Here is a poem that speaks of loss--
compares it to rain that streams down gutters.
I try to absorb it as though it were made of water,
yet cannot, for the words run off me,
like losing you never did.
The green world rolls by, and I think of how
grief is so much more like the fallen snow.
It is heavy sadness that cloaks
those who can do nothing but stand still,
allowing it to fall upon shoulders in sheets,
and sheets, fierce wind piling it into drifts of uncertainty.

It is ten-o’clock when we lose you,
your legs buckle and you fall backward onto the couch.
I do not see this, I am filling your bath--
the first one in days,
you would not allow us to bathe you until now.
I hear mom scream
like I’ve never before heard her voice,
this high-pitched shriek that jets through the house,
winds around corners of walls
and splinters off in my ears,
like wood breaking.
I run.
You are paler than I have ever seen you,
blue eyes open, as though seeing
someone you haven’t in a long while,
your shoulder propped up by a couch cushion
so that your head lolls in an unnatural state.
You are not breathing,
and mom is still screaming,
“Bill - don’t do this to me, not now!”
My future husband is standing in back of the couch
looking at you, at me, at mom. He paces.
I put my hand on your chest,
my ear to your face--
my hand to your neck, your wrist--
there is nothing, no breath, no light.
I yell out, “Call 911.”
Paul panics and asks me what the number is.
I pull the cushion from under you and shout, “911.”
You now lay flat, and I tilt back your head with my palm,
put my hand under your neck like I was taught in summer camp.
I sweep my fingers through your mouth,
pull out your dentures and throw them on the coffee table.
I breathe for you, my mouth on yours--
my breath, your breath,
I inhale staleness, Daddy,
I can taste the cancer.
But I can’t bring you back.

Final layer blown hard by frigid air,
so solid, that if someone were to step out onto it,
they might fall through in implosion.

I am numb, there is no other word to describe it, Dad,
no other word does justice to this lack of sensation.
I’m looking at you in the casket,
great American flag cocooning the mahogany,
thinking nothing, feeling nothing, but this pain
that seems to well up in my chest every now and again,
and overflow like last night’s bathwater.
“He hardly looks like Bill,” I hear the whispers
nobody thinks I can hear, the cautious comments
made from behind finger covered hands,
“So sad to lose him so young, such a waste.”
These words do not affect me,
but instead drift over me, like dust.
I never thought you’d actually die, Daddy--
you seemed too full of life to ever be empty.
Your body in the coffin, the minister speaks.
I do not hear him. I hold mom as she cries,
I comfort my sister. I hold Paul in my arms,
and somehow, I hold myself together.

Pure in intention,
white inevitably turns to gray,
as the guilt of the forgetting begins.

Mom sold the house today, Dad.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt such melancholy in my life.
It was as if she doesn’t want to remember you anymore.
perhaps it’s too painful for her, I see you in everything here:
on the dock, net in hand, trying to catch the elusive blue crab--
by the piano listening to Kelly play a song for the seventeenth time--
on that chair, with little hair left, bottle of morphine by your side.
I still hear your voice here, I still expect
your car to pull up in the drive, your footsteps on the walk,
your hello from the front door. . .
We will try to forget you now,
this house sold,
this door to our family history at a close.

Ultimately, thaw will melt sadness
into pools of slush until nothing remains
but tufts of grass,
the memory of the storm,
and of the warm autumn days before it.

I don’t know when it happened, Dad,
but somehow the pain has lessened--
It has drifted off, ebbed day by day,

I dreamt of you again last night.
You were healthy, I was young and on that old tire swing,
the one you put up in New Hope when we were children.
I asked you to push me, and you did, “Higher, Daddy, higher!”
I flew through the low blue sky, pumped my feet like you taught me
and stretched them out in front of me, as thought I could touch the clouds.
You were smiling, I was laughing, and autumn leaves were falling. . .

The bus pulls into its stop
I close the book and think--

here is a poem that speaks of loss.

Judge Harvey Stanbrough’s comment: “I selected 'Here Is a Poem That Speaks of Loss' for first place because it’s devoid of excess. Even in its length, every word and line is necessary. From a technical standpoint, I very much enjoyed the poet’s obvious sense of structure, allowing the longer lines to carry the emotion of the poem and using shorter ones to evoke a sense of drama when necessary.”