March 2019
Penny Harter
penhart@2hweb.net
penhart@2hweb.net
In 2002, after eleven years living in Santa Fe (a mid-life leap after living most of our lives in NJ), my late husband Bill Higginson and I moved back to northern NJ to be closer to family again. Grandchildren started being born, plus we missed our kids. After Bill died in 2008, I moved again, down to the South Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and her family. I am about a forty-minute drive inland, on winding country roads, from the Atlantic Ocean.
For some years my drive to and from work in a high school some miles from my home took me through The Great Swamp in northern NJ. And for those years there were frequent dead deer by the roadside. I felt so sad for them, I had to write this poem. The poem startled me by where it took me---especially the shape-shifting at the end. I have always written for the Earth and those who share it with us. This poem surprised me by transforming me into an animal. It also surprised me with phrases like "whose antlers flowered on his head / like found money." Where did that "like found money" come from?
Deer Crossing
This morning, the car in front of me
stops suddenly, waits
as five deer emerge from somebody's back yard,
crossing the frosty grass
to bound across the Boulevard
into the saplings of the Great Swamp.
I don't know what to do
about the pregnant doe
I counted dead by the side of the road
three mornings last week,
her white belly shining
in the sunrise;
about the young buck hit yesterday,
spun down midst broken glass,
weeping,
and police cars.
I only know the boundaries are blurring:
that buck whose antlers flowered on his head
like found money,
slept in your bed last night,
that doe in mine,
while we stumbled in our nakedness,
running on all fours
through thickets of dark trees
to freeze in the stunning light
of an unexpected clearing.
[From Turtle Blessing, La Alameda Press, NM. 1996.]
"Death Illuminates Me" is the first poem I wrote after my late husband Bill's death. It appears toward the beginning of my collection Recycling Starlight, the cycle of poems I wrote during the first eighteen months after my late husband, Bill Higginson, died. The act of writing those poems saved me, went a long way toward confronting and accepting his death, healing my grief.
Bill died on 10/11/08, and I wrote this on 10/29/08. I had not written since July when he'd first exhibited symptoms of the cancer that took him out. He and I had been contacted to run a series of poetry writing workshops for a community arts foundation. We'd pulled out, but they contacted me and said that five women had signed up. This was only a few weeks after Bill had died, but I knew he'd want me to do it after all. So I did. At our first meeting I told them what had happened, Bill's dying, and that I hadn't written, myself, in several months. I'd brought with me some phrases / prompts for them to respond to. And suddenly, into my head, popped the phrase "Death Illuminates Me." Wow! I thought about the various meanings of "illuminates". The women insisted I write to it. I did, and this is what came out. It broke the dam of grief, and I wrote along with them each of the six sessions we met. The resulting poems appear in Recycling Starlight. :
Death Illuminates Me
- for Bill -
Death illuminates me.
My skin is a trumpet.
Fire blows from my limbs
like a plague of locusts
buzzing in the dark.
Your death scalds me.
Its tears score my cheeks,
running into the river
where you must be, freed
from the tether of the flesh.
And those ashes
in the box I’ve buried for now
in your empty closet
are cold, my love,
cold, though I do not
touch them—
I want to burn,
burn through the mourning
into light.
[From Recycling Starlight, Mountains and Rivers Press, OR. 2013.]
By the River
This is the final day of years of sweetness.
-Petrarch
You have been gone a year.
The taste of you has stayed with me
these twelve months, your honeyed warmth
lingering on my limbs.
Today, I sit on a floating dock by the river,
listening to the faint hum of insects as I enter
a rippling that flows from a center
I have yet to find.
For your last meal, you wanted sweetness—
lemon sorbet in a paper cup— and I watched
the nurse spoon it into your waiting mouth
as if you were an infant, watched you savor
a sweetness that would carry you out.
It is autumn again, and the trees have begun
their fierce burning. Remember how we
walked through scarlet and gold, stooping
to pick up the best of the fallen? How I sent
some to my mother just weeks before
she died, sealed the envelope with the kiss
of my saliva?
Today, I give our sweetness to this river,
send it out on floating yellow leaves
that flicker on the water like candles
for the dead.
[From Recycling Starlight, Mountains and Rivers Press, OR. 2013]
Deer Crossing
This morning, the car in front of me
stops suddenly, waits
as five deer emerge from somebody's back yard,
crossing the frosty grass
to bound across the Boulevard
into the saplings of the Great Swamp.
I don't know what to do
about the pregnant doe
I counted dead by the side of the road
three mornings last week,
her white belly shining
in the sunrise;
about the young buck hit yesterday,
spun down midst broken glass,
weeping,
and police cars.
I only know the boundaries are blurring:
that buck whose antlers flowered on his head
like found money,
slept in your bed last night,
that doe in mine,
while we stumbled in our nakedness,
running on all fours
through thickets of dark trees
to freeze in the stunning light
of an unexpected clearing.
[From Turtle Blessing, La Alameda Press, NM. 1996.]
"Death Illuminates Me" is the first poem I wrote after my late husband Bill's death. It appears toward the beginning of my collection Recycling Starlight, the cycle of poems I wrote during the first eighteen months after my late husband, Bill Higginson, died. The act of writing those poems saved me, went a long way toward confronting and accepting his death, healing my grief.
Bill died on 10/11/08, and I wrote this on 10/29/08. I had not written since July when he'd first exhibited symptoms of the cancer that took him out. He and I had been contacted to run a series of poetry writing workshops for a community arts foundation. We'd pulled out, but they contacted me and said that five women had signed up. This was only a few weeks after Bill had died, but I knew he'd want me to do it after all. So I did. At our first meeting I told them what had happened, Bill's dying, and that I hadn't written, myself, in several months. I'd brought with me some phrases / prompts for them to respond to. And suddenly, into my head, popped the phrase "Death Illuminates Me." Wow! I thought about the various meanings of "illuminates". The women insisted I write to it. I did, and this is what came out. It broke the dam of grief, and I wrote along with them each of the six sessions we met. The resulting poems appear in Recycling Starlight. :
Death Illuminates Me
- for Bill -
Death illuminates me.
My skin is a trumpet.
Fire blows from my limbs
like a plague of locusts
buzzing in the dark.
Your death scalds me.
Its tears score my cheeks,
running into the river
where you must be, freed
from the tether of the flesh.
And those ashes
in the box I’ve buried for now
in your empty closet
are cold, my love,
cold, though I do not
touch them—
I want to burn,
burn through the mourning
into light.
[From Recycling Starlight, Mountains and Rivers Press, OR. 2013.]
By the River
This is the final day of years of sweetness.
-Petrarch
You have been gone a year.
The taste of you has stayed with me
these twelve months, your honeyed warmth
lingering on my limbs.
Today, I sit on a floating dock by the river,
listening to the faint hum of insects as I enter
a rippling that flows from a center
I have yet to find.
For your last meal, you wanted sweetness—
lemon sorbet in a paper cup— and I watched
the nurse spoon it into your waiting mouth
as if you were an infant, watched you savor
a sweetness that would carry you out.
It is autumn again, and the trees have begun
their fierce burning. Remember how we
walked through scarlet and gold, stooping
to pick up the best of the fallen? How I sent
some to my mother just weeks before
she died, sealed the envelope with the kiss
of my saliva?
Today, I give our sweetness to this river,
send it out on floating yellow leaves
that flicker on the water like candles
for the dead.
[From Recycling Starlight, Mountains and Rivers Press, OR. 2013]
© 2019 Penny Harter
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