Oh how we hang on
even to our ficus, making sure it leans
toward the light and keeps greening up,
hoping our orchids only play dead and
will burst back into bloom--
and stay there.
We want every last leaf and frond
and fern to make it,
also our cloudy-eyed German Shepherd--
may she sit by my feet forever and
may the cat keep watch in the window and
may our kids and friends--all--
hang on—
our own selves especially—and
leaf out again and again
without end.
Oh how we hang on.
We sit on the porch and sense eternity —
right here, beside the Rosemary and Mint.
And when the bougainvillea finally gives out,
when the dearest friend doesn’t pull through,
we stare down at the ashes and
make something infinite
out of that smoke, see a world
glowing at the edges
without end.
Oh how we hang on.
Grief gets strange like that—rank and holy.
Even though we follow the science,
and nothing about forever makes sense.
My husband died ten years ago.
His ashes fell soft as snow into the sea—
no words fit for that world beyond
atoms and forces, yet mind holds
him intact and some part of him
keeps glowing in the dark.
Oh how we hold on
and pray for the soul to slip
into the sky
like a bird let out of a cage,
and there is a lasting flame
at the center of things
that never goes out.
Oh how we how on,
tell ourselves that flame was never born,
so it cannot die.
A whole forest of priests agrees with us.
But it’s the wind through the oaks and
the way the moss clings to stone that
persuades us we will hang on too.
The part of us that longs for
the ever ripe apples
in our never rotting hands.
