June 2024
Bio Note: I'm a Wisconsin poet who served as the state's third Poet Laureate in 2009 and 2010. After residing for many years in Milwaukee, I now live in Madison, where I continue to present readings and workshops locally, statewide, and elsewhere. The poem below is one I wrote at a sad time in my life; re-reading it now, many years later, brings with it an odd mixture of nostalgia and solace. I must quickly add that some vastly more cheerful poems of mine can be found on my website.
Iron Man
is what the nurses named you late last night
as your lungs kept steadily inflating,
hesitating—then deflating, right
on cue, your heart fixated on creating
a steady backbeat for the crusty rasp
of respiration. I saw how your hands
had interlaced themselves into the grasp
of one another— like the sweet demands
the dying lay on those already grieving.
Then I heard your bedside amaryllis
drop a wilted bloom—a sign you’re leaving—
and found in that a cryptic kind of solace.
So keep on breathing, dear heart. We both know
it’s not quite time—not yet—for you to go.
©2024 Marilyn L. Taylor
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL