Dead of night

This is a poem about that night.

It could be about my mother,
my father,
my brother,
or my man
because all died
in the dead of night.

For a long time, it was getting ready
to happen
and then it happened
at the exact time when nothing
is supposed to happen.

They all got that dry nose and
startled look, twilight
dimming from day to night,
to the very dead of night,
one by one, decades apart,
all got that puzzled look,
a match flame in the iris,
bodies mushed as pumpkins in June,
becoming the ground,
placed in their boxes–my people,
now the fruit that sweetens
my compost.

Her voice

Between sips of French Roast, words 
dribble 
into this white space
and wiggle to life,
to become perhaps 
a poem 
or the last leg 
of one. 

I can do this all day. 
I am in no hurry. 
I can get up any time for a stroll 
then sit down again here 
or in some other cafe 
and read Sharon Olds' confessions 
to loosen my shy tongue 
until words sprinkle around 
and I see some consoling truth 
emerge in this or that phrase 
and then lean back, 
sip more coffee, 
hear thoughts meander 
out of their caves 
down my right hand 
onto this page, 
just as I magined 
all those years 
sitting in that high rise 
looking down on cafes 
where people at small tables 
like this one 
sat for hours 
eavesdropping, 
scribbling. 

Someday that will be you, 
a voice consoled. 
That voice of longing 
that won't die in me.

My new chapbook, Moments of Our Parting, available on Amazon

ttps://www.amazon.com/Moments-Our-Parting-Ellen-McCarthy/dp/1976348765/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509291183&sr=8-1&keywords=ellen+mccarthy+moments+of+our+parting

Comments from readers:

After the trial

After the trial, and what a trial; 

one manages to stand up again;
life wants to go on.

Odd isn’t it?

To love life even though it takes and takes.

When the raft floats away, we refuse to sink

but clasp life’s hand like a drowning child.

No one buries their beloved and leaps off 

the roof. 
Not even Edgar Allan Poe

after loosing the beautiful Lenore,

the light of wants remained lit in him.

Our bodies, these lamps of desire, endure,
tho awake all night, naked and stiff.

Chimes

Wind on metals,

a match made 

in heaven,

a sound fluent 

in sorrow and joy, 

each note 

a simple spirit

that tows me 

from my self 

into the eye 

of a storm, 

a center, free, 

no agitation; 

whatever I do, 

wherever I stand, 

the ting ting ting 

brings me to a pause;

my crouching soul 

stands up 

and bows to it,

feels each note 

enter as a kind word, 

feels the ting ting ting 

of grace, 

the ting ting ting 

of blessing 

come over me.  

I say, gather me 

and ting to me 

and seal me up. 

Counting the damage

What if I forget him?

What if he blurs like a good vacation?

Already I have to concentrate, piece him 

together as a puzzle, matching the bits into familiar

body parts--his swollen knee, wrist with
fancy watch, lips pinched into a trumpet.   

What if the pieces tatter? 

Stop fitting? 

What if one day I can’t recall 

but a moment? 

Already a hush settles into every crevice 

as if stillness were normal in our house.

Already I have grown used to having 
no one in love with me.

I frame photos with the breath of panic,

mail his face to everyone.

I will not count his memory

among all the other damage.

Threads

Widows:

Don’t turn away 

from the mirror. 

Keep looking 

at what you’re made of--cloth strong 

enough to be a flag and don’t forget 

he loved you 

for your spine 

that’s not crocheted but woven 

tight as burlap

and because your heart is spun 

of silk, 

its long threads pulled 

from countless other acts 

of metamorphoses.

How to remember

For quality memories, first blanche them; 

the dirt will ruin all. 

Peel off the shade before storage. 

Like the day you played hooky 

with a married old professor.

Keep only his grateful kisses,

how tenderly he squeezed your hand goodbye. 

Store only drops of joy, hold on 

to the sweet seeds and juice. 

Memories can be chopped up any way you like; 

almost none can be kept whole. 

So stick with the best parts, the parts least 

bruised and spoiled, snip what lacks the flavor 

of happy recollections. 

I can tell you that grief and other passions 

loosen the tough skins of bitter times––they slip 

off easily. Let the pealed memories cool 

then store them in your heart's larder. 

When you’re ready, behold this delicious jam, 

savor it for the rest of your days. 

All of them laughing

i only write about the dead. 

the dead are all i write about 

because i cannot get over those 

cold still hands. 

i cannot get over those 

lonely sounds.

i cannot, just cannot 

get over them. 

Hours, months pass 

and graves close up;

new things grow on top; 

a hard scab forms that only 

hurts if you move

the wrong way. 

best not stress that scab or else 

it bursts with hard new pain. 

i only write about the dead because 

i cannot get over them, 

i write to rip their fingers from my heart, 

to scrub their dander 

from my skin. 

the suffocating dead; i see their faces, 

all of them laughing. 

all of them content, 

all of them tired of me, 

my endless mourning.

Cry a gray river

All day every day their cries 

invade my house, 

cries so shrill they burst 

from souls of souls from all directions, I hear 

the screamers shot, gassed, 

blasted from homes, 

kicked over borders; 

every day I hear 

the whimperers--sick, hungry; those 

despised for some singularity, 

some disparity at birth and then 

there’s the mourners like me 

whose lovers left them. 

What can we do 

after the postcard to Congress, 

after the march, 

after the all-night benders? 

I can say crying a deep gray river will soothe us, 

somehow a gray river of tears

will hold us steady;

and so will chanting 

and so will rocking, 

and so will praying, 

though no one 

beyond the lamp post 

will give a damn but

we can rest. 

Warning

There were warnings.

The frisky pulse and flow within,

the puzzled looks, the growing thin.

the kinks in lids, the stickiness and all

in every honeycomb of him, up, down, I heard 

the call but was sure of time, thought more of it then

--not so now I’ve seen its fainting pen, 

for really time and time again that glue

was always plenty, really all we knew.

But it runs, runs out on them, on you

and we are locked long in its slur:

shame and blame all go with mourning 

and then the anxious wait 

for yet another warning.

Under thumb

For a year I only write about my father. 

Words pour out in streams. 

I am a jug filled with father thoughts 

until one day they stop 

and then every day I write 

about her, more than 365 days, 

all about her. 

It shocks me how many thoughts 

of her fit into a jug. 

How liquid they are until only some 

flow from me and then the very last ones 

dribble onto the page and it is over. 

I have not thought about him since the writings. 

My mind is empty. All was said. Everything, 

every last thought, said. 

I am now devoid of father thoughts, 

as if I had had no father. 

Then the jug fills up again, this time with mother thoughts. 

Every day I write about her. It shocks me.

Every day I tip the jug and from its spout pour

the rivers and rivers of mother thoughts. 

Sometimes it seems I will never run out but I do. 

The day came when the jug felt dry as baked clay. 

My mind on the subject of mother was empty. 

Now I see her name and my mind is blank. 

I am purged and clean; I am a motherless person. 

Then my man died and his death usurped. 

Everything I encounter connects me to his absence. 

I have been under that thumb for so long 

and I'm afraid to stop because he too will be gone. 

Out of mind, out of sight. 

Tourist

I barely move now. Nearly still.

Crawling beneath a shell, 

the past stacked high, scales 

for every memory. 

Inside each, a photo or two. 

Some letters. A wool cap.

With my load, I amble 

along, here and there. 

No sense of where. 

The question every day, 

where now? 

What is life without a hill to climb? 

There must be a hill to climb.

A widow must step outside 

and look around,

pick up a tool and get to work. 

She must choose a path and clear it, 

then fill it with flagstone. 

No good to stroll about  

like some old tourist 

in Chinatown. 

Gutttural sounds

Oh honey, look at me.

Sitting here and must endure

your failure to be present,

to suffer the deficiency 

of you all by myself,

endure the lack of you 

without you.

Here and now this paucity 

of you must be gone

through so alone.

I can’t remember all we did,

only how you nursed me in the dark.

I have memorized your eyes on me.

I could not love you more 

than I loved myself 

but I loved you enough, 

or so you wrote in every card 

piled here on my lap. 

But just when I need you most, 

you are so absent,

so enormous this gap.

Groomed

His grooming strikes you 

the way a green golf course in winter 

calls out 

for a long long 

glance. 

His love of it speaks

no words, 

there’s a shyness in him 

toward the art 

though he entered the world 

knowing 

its schemes.

Even when the nurse wheels 
him to dinner, 

you must look at the man 

with waves of white hair 

in the knobby whelk sweater, 

those dark eyes open and blank 

as a mounted stag, 

but my oh my, 

what class, what rank.