I bought myself a ring:
silvery, shaped like a fox.
I slip it on my right hand,
on the third finger. On my left
I still wear my wedding ring
from Andrew, although I am
long widowed. You too are dead.
I’m fourteen years a widow now.
It feels long. You, I have mourned
54 years already. It seems like
yesterday. I don’t need a ring
to remember you, or him.
But I like the thought of at last
bringing you, too, physically present.
After dancing with him in the forest
one recalls few details – only the speed
of reckless feet, the rush of wind
through flowing hair, the giddying swirl
inside firm arms holding safe, and
the after-taste of ecstasy. (He has
many names, the Horned God.)
Written for Quadrille 249 at dVerse. (44 words not including title, which on this occasion must include some form of the word 'horn'.)
(‘Tells with silence the last light breaking’)
Tells –
utters / informs / relates … and ah,
what Katherine did was relate
with –
alongside, in the company of … she was one
who was never away from, always with
silence –
absence of noise, deep quiet … she could be
noisy, loud with laughter, yet in her presence
I found deep peace; we could be quiet together,
needing no words (though, both, workers in words)
the –
definitive … to define her would take many words
or none; one could write pages of rapturous description,
which would have to include somewhere her laughter,
her huge capacity for joy – yet wholly fail to capture her
last –
at last, the end, finality … but there is nothing final about
this long friendship, sisterhood, true understanding, ever
light –
shining, radiant, illumination, clarity, the light of knowledge
… she shed light on the hidden; also, alight, lit up our lives
breaking –
coming apart, fracturing, dividing into pieces … separating
into past and future, self and other, here and gone, alive / dead
Inspired by a prompt from Laura Bloomsbury, for dVerse: Taking a Fine Line Down.
A word acrostic focusing on definitions of the words chosen. The line, 'tells with silence the last light breaking' is from Dylan Thomas's A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London. (To get the formatting to work on the blog page, I needed to put the words above each verse instead of to the left – which perhaps differentiates it from an acrostic, but I think it works as a poem.)