Loss & Recovery…conjoined hand to hand

We are at a stage of profound sadness.

Memories will be permanently etched in our mindset

And the gravity of the moment may dissipate for some and then for others,

A hole. An abyss. A crater that will never be filled.

The seizures and devastation are not bound by any societal trait.

“19” will stay a haunting number, a remembrance best forgotten, but that is wishful thinking.

How do we adequately explain loss to young children…?

In reality, how is unexpected death explainable…to anyone…regardless of age.

“Here today and gone tomorrow” may be considered somewhat trite when each day brings unbearable likeness to the day prior.

In the community of poets, a suggestion from one poet to another, often opens a pathway for readers to experience a poet they may not be familiar with. Thank you, Bruce Bennett, for prompting Bob Daly to join aaduna’s celebration of National Poetry Month.

Robert W. Daly [photo provided]

Robert W. Daly, a native of Watertown, New York and Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University, participates in poetry workshops at the YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, New York. He spends time in DeWitt and Clayton, New York.

His poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, 2013 (“Don’t Touch”) and thousandislandslife.com, a Canadian on-line journal in 2015 (“Life Jackets.”)

DON’T TOUCH

It was her dresser, with her things,
a place that belonged to her, was her.
“Mine,” she’d say.

“Do not touch the dresser set - the comb, the brush, the mirror with

my initials engraved by the silversmith.

Do not touch the green, cut-glass pitcher that Alice gave me,

            or the white Madonna,
            or the three dogs,
            or the olive wood carving of The Flight into Egypt,

            or my perfume,

            or the blue tile with the hand holding a heart.  

            A valentine from you.

Don’t even move your picture, you as a college man,

the one you gave me when I was sixteen and
you were twenty-two.

And don’t put any thing on my dresser.”

“Can I look in the mirror?” I wondered.

So it was, for decades.

*

Even after she died,

right there in front of us and the dresser,
it remained hers. 

For months I kept the dresser as it was,

a shrine, a sacred place beyond use,
dedicated to love - and memory.

*

Today, crying and lonely, I

stare at her things and the dresser.

Still among the living, I see anew my picture.
She wanted it there, for her, then. 

Now, this picture does not belong.

I want it gone.  
It feeds my loss.
I place it out of sight.

What of the green pitcher, the dogs, the dresser?

Will they, in time, be released from
their duties as memorials,
hers and mine?

Certainly.

Just not yet.                                                    

* * * 

Life Jackets

As he got in the wooden boat,
the boat my father bought in forty-nine
when I was sixteen, I watched
my grandson slip on a life jacket,
black and red, filled with neoprene,
                         the one I’d given him.

Then for me, a question.

What further gear will he need,
not now, but later, to insulate him
from other harms along life’s way? 
Good habits, his own vocations,
sound judgments, some luck,
worthy companions, I answered.

When my musing ceased,
he was already out of sight,
exploring The River and The Islands,
leaving his family behind.

And I had neglected to say,

“Have fun,” or,

Tell us what happened
when you return.”

***

“Here today, gone tomorrow” is a phrase first noted in John Calvin’s Life and Conversion of a Christian Man (1549.) “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow” is a song written by bandmembers of the Ohio Players for their 1969 album, “Observations in Time.” David Bowie performed the song as part of his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour and later it was released on a 1990 Bowie live album as “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.”

Stay safe.  Be well.

bill

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