the way the light
carves into a broken heart
and makes an empty tomb
© 2025 jennifer wagner
poetic bloomings: matters of the heart
day 20
photo: antelope canyon © jennifer wagner
the way the light
carves into a broken heart
and makes an empty tomb
© 2025 jennifer wagner
poetic bloomings: matters of the heart
day 20
photo: antelope canyon © jennifer wagner
She says she’s ready to go
and I know she means
two things at once.
I feel selfish for wanting her to mean
only one—
to stay with us a little longer
enjoying the hummingbird blanket I bought her
(she says it’s her favorite),
and the chocolates she loves
(at 95 I’ve introduced her to something new),
to hear her stories
of when she first moved to Phoenix
with her beloved, 71 years ago.
But bones are breaking in her spine
and cataracts and histoplasmosis
from the Ohio River Valley
make it so she can’t see much anymore.
She wants to go home
and Home.
Holding onto my hands
a little longer at the Rehab Center,
I hear a fluttering, a humming
I recognize as goodbye.
And so, this poem,
meant to explain, to show and not tell,
to show and to tell,
why I am a poet and not something else—
sits here between two things—
where else can I put
all the joy and pain
held in between
these brief but beautiful wings.
© 2025 Jennifer Wagner
When, not if, the trail leads me
to face the rocky Baboquivari
looming with the threat of jaguars and rattlesnakes,
at least it gives the promise
of Mexican Frankincense
in the burning Sonoran heat.
The taunt retreats,
and for a moment,
is a courting lover
blowing an arid, piney kiss
from a ribbon of birds whistling
in trees near the narrowing peak.
These are no mere trifles. But welcome sugar.
Welcome, sweet. And though the bitter
may not be made quite golden, I’m thankful
God made it so that if the mountain doesn’t move,
and I’m going to have to climb that thing,
at least it sings.
© 2025 Jennifer Wagner
dVerse Poetics: Personifying the Abstract
(life & challenges/trials)