Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts

Monday, May 27, 2024

Rose Water

 

Trembling at the beach

on a day meant for indoors,

 

tossing her ashes

like a paper airplane

 

in the wind,

 

we knew it was

always going to be this way—

 

she was always

going to come back to us,

 

one way or another—

 

her ghost on the cereal box, first thing,

her costumes hanging in the attic,

 

somehow noisily animated

after dark.

 

Each of our eyes

a Lucky Strike,

 

red-rimmed and wondering

how to pilot

 

the rest of it

without her.

 

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For the List at Shay’s Word Garden

Monday, February 27, 2017

Shroud


Photo © 2017 Jennifer Wagner


Each season has its own offering.  Spring buds.  Summer glows.  Autumn colors.  Winter shrouds.  In winter, we hold contradictions up to the waning light, swirl them round the glass, sip.  Our losses are bettered in this reflection, when we can begin to see what good comes even after the fissured earth cracks again, when what remains softens, fills.

how silent now
this path strewn with jagged stones
a softening of snow


© 2017 Jennifer Wagner