How strange, how passing strange, when we awake
And lift our faces to the light
To know that you are lying shut away
Within the night.
How strange, how passing strange, when we lie down
To sleep, to know that you are quite
Alone beneath the moon, the stars, the little leaves,
Within the night.
How strange, how passing strange to know—our eyes
Will gladden at the fine sweet sight
Of you no more, for now your face is hid
Within the night.
Strange, strange indeed, these things to us appear
And yet we know they must be right;
And though your body sleeps, your soul has passed
Beyond the night.
Ah! friend, it must be sweet to slip from out
The tears, the pain, the losing fight
Below, and rest, just rest eternally
Beyond the night.
And sweet it must be too, to know the kiss
Of Peace, of Peace, the pure, the white
And step beside her hand in hand quite close
Beyond the night.
This poem is in the public domain.
The son I’ll never have is crossing the lawn. He is lying on an imaginary bed,
the coverlet pulled up over his knees—knees I don’t dare describe.
I recoil from imagining him as meat and bone, as a mind
and hands stroking the fur of his pet rabbit.
I never gave him the accordion I used to play, my mother and I
in duets: “The Minnesota Polka,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,”
never watched him push noodles into his mouth with fingers
while I wished he would use the spoon shiny with disuse.
I am free from longing to be free; I do as I please,
my money is my own, all the mistakes I make are only my mistakes.
What is it to look at something you made and see the future?
What is it to have someone made by your body, but whose mind
remains just out of reach? I’ll never know. Come here, little rabbit.
Eat these greens. I will pet your cloudy fur with the mind’s hand.
Copyright © 2016 by Mark Wunderlich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 19, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.