Post Mortem

A man in the Times today
they said his wife had died
and that he'd been named the nation's
14th poet laureate-

In the picture
He sat with his arm resting along the back
of a nearby chair
but alas, the chair was largely symbolic
she was not there.

I saw that look in his eyes.
I felt the slouchy weight of him

I felt the stone walls of New England
running through him
marking time and property and loss.

I saw the lichen climbing along
the back of his calves

I saw the stone rubbing
of his poem on a headstone
Overgrown, cracked, shipwrecked.

This is what the poet Donald Hall, the nation's 14th poet laureate, said about his wife. Who died before she could see her husband in his moment.



without

we lived in a small island stone nation

without color under gray clouds and wind

distant the unlimited ocean acute

lymphoblastic leukemia without seagulls

or palm trees without vegetation

or animal life only barnacles and lead

colored moss that darkened when months did.


###


"I have a terrible miscellany of thoughts," is what he told the Times.


Indeed.