The Gilded Shadow
The impact is simmering down, as into
a solvent liquid. That I’ll never hear your voice
again, but through a medium like
rain. Or will see you but in a lightning flash.
You are nature’s speech, the young girth
and deadly imprint.
I eagerly wait the date of your rebirth, in
the endless window-sky. Hovering cloud, really a
gilded shadow that lights your face outline. Waters
and land permit no elegy translated.
But a stark villanelle, facts rendered.
An indefinite, glorious seeding,
the element that draws us closest. Nucleus of
a meadow, the grass-tips’ ghost your
being. Bend me to earth, the only hereafter after death.
O shades beneath the sun. Or I don’t understand it —
like embracing a mystery hole in our minds,
this complex, heartbreak survival.
- died March 17, 2009
I had to come back to this one, because it made me cry. These lines…oh…these lines:
“…That I’ll never hear your voice
again, but through a medium like
rain. Or will see you but in a lightning flash.”
When I think of all the people I have survived, this poem captures all those feelings of the heartbreak of survival. I like that she uses the word “complex.” It really is. What a powerful poem. Thanks, sister. You always find the perfect poems to share. I love it.
Yup, this one blows me away too sistah!