Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Coyote

 

Today I write poems.

The hard ones.

The worst and best to write.

 

Regret at how I hurt you

as you were so little

while my fears were so big

and so looming.

 

I am sorry.

I am fool enough to think

these words may be enough.

 

Looking out the window

at the fog that got us both,

I know this is how you, feel, too—

lost, unseeing.

 

I don’t know when you will understand

and shake off your winter coat

and run, orange fur escaping into the sun

and meadows I kept you from.

Go now, I pray.

 

Your bruisings I will hold in my heart, I hope,

if allowed,

so you may be free

 

from this tumbleweed field

where I birthed you,

where my eyelashes are becoming weighted down

by dust.

 

Go, go, and remember the best of us.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

4 comments:

  1. This is gutting, but also has a definite tenderness, too. Sometimes the poems that are the hardest to write and cost us the most to create, are also the ones that really say the unsayable most clearly.

    I would make a better comment, but the election has left me wretchedly depressed.

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  2. Poignant, visually stunning and emotional.

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  3. penned with grace and eloquence, Jen ~

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Thank you for your thoughts!