December 2020
Mary McCarthy
Mmccarthy161@gmail.com
Bio Note: In thinking about Gratitude I found myself considering loss. The connection is, I think, an intimate one, that loss can become an opportunity for gratitude, an invitation to hope, a spur to recovery. All things we need more than ever in these times of uncertainty, isolation and anxiety. In darkness we learn to treasure light, in isolation to cherish our connections.

Lost and Found

Last night I missed my favorite gold chain
The one with the crab charm
We bought first time at the beach
And I took the house apart
Room by room
Unable to believe
It was gone

Sorting through pots and seeds
In the cellar
I found my last year’s Amaryllis
There in the dark
Where I’d left it cut back down
To the bulb
And forgotten

It had put up a long
Pale white stem
And a huge half open
Silk-red flower
Disregarded
Without light
Without water

Resurrected from its own root
waiting for me
like a pledge
of unexpected hope

Your Death Was

Not sudden
not the small body
floating face down
in the pool
like a fallen leaf
still perfect and unmarked
by his first season

no one could complain
your time too short
gathering you in
like armfuls of sweet
ripe wheat
like a garden harvested
and always full
a richness inexhaustible
our worlds spun out
of your own flesh
each of us a message
carrying your signature
through the cold dark
nameless spaces
between the stars

Bereft

You took my voice with you
When you left
Like a souvenir you’d use
To remind you
How we talked
Easily, endlessly
Without a thought
Of this final silence

Surrounded by fall
In all its bright
Dazzle and flash
I nurse a stubborn darkness
I have convinced myself
You left behind for me
Refusing to surrender
The prerogatives of grief

No matter
Even the tightest fist
Must soon unclench
The driest throat
Swallow
The lungs relax again
Into breath
The heart look up
To morning
©2020 Mary McCarthy
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL