Loss
It is nice to be without answers
at the end of summer.
Wind lifting leaves from branches.
The moment laid down like something
in childhood and forgotten, until later,
when stumbled upon, we think:
this is where it was lost.
The sadness isn't their sadness.
The sadness is the way
they will never unpack the rucksack
of happiness again.
They'll never surface as divers rising
through leagues of joy, through sun
willowing through the bottom half of waves.
They'll never surface again.
Again and again,
they will never surface.
Copyright © 2013 by Carl Adamshick. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on July 10, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"'Loss' came out of a collaboration with Andy Buck. He carved these three-and-a-half inch figures out of wood and applied milk-paint for their clothes. The figures seemed to me somber and I was to give them a voice and narrative. I named each figure, and each figure spoke to something missing. This is number nine in a series of twenty-three. His name is Thomas."
—Carl Adamshick
Carl Adamshick
Adamshick’s debut poetry collection, Curses and Wishes (Louisiana State University Press, 2011), was selected by Marvin Bell for the 2010 Walt Whitman Award.