Susan's Photograph (audio only)
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you leapt sometimes
you walked away sometimes
that time on the phone you
couldn’t get your breath
I leapt but couldn’t get to you
I caught the brow that bid the dead
I caught the bough that hid
I’m, you know, still here,
tulip, resin, temporary—
2016
You came in a dream, yesterday
—The first day we met
you showed me your dark workroom
off the kitchen, your books, your notebooks.
Reading our last, knowing-last letters
—the years of our friendship
reading our poems to each other,
I would start breathing again.
Yesterday, in the afternoon,
more than a year since you died,
some words came into the air.
I looked away a second,
and they were gone,
six lines, just passing through.
for Adrienne Rich
2013
In the elephant field tall green ghost elephants with your cargo of summer leaves at night I heard you breathing at the window Don't you ever think I'm not crying since you're away from me Don't ever think I went free At first the goodbye had a lilt to it— maybe just a couple of months— but it was a beheading. Ghost elephant, reach down, cross me over—
2012