Three Years

Two poems from Pamela Gillilan:

Two Years
When you died
all the doors banged shut.

After two years, inch by inch,
they creep open.
I can relish
small encounters,
encourage
small flares of desire;
begin to believe as you did
things come right.
I tell myself that you
escaped the slow declension of old age
leaving me to indulge
this wintry flowering.

But I know
it's not like that at all.



Four Years
The smell of him went soon
from all his shirts.
I sent them for jumble,
and the sweaters and suits.
The shoes
held more of him; he was printed
into his shoes. I did not burn
or throw or give them away.
Time has denatured them now.

Nothing left.
There will never be
a hair of his in a comb.
But I want to believe
that in the shifting housedust
minute presences still drift:
an eyelash,
a hard crescent cut from a fingernail,
that sometimes
between the folds of a curtain
or the covers of a book
I touch
a flake of his skin.

"Two Years" can be found in The All Steel Traveller; "Four Years" from the anthology Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley.

 via pinterest.

Dedicated to my brother.

One Thing Leads to Another

It was the second anniversary of my husband's passing a few days ago. I bought flowers, we lit candles, and honored his memory. Since he loved and wrote poetry,  here's a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver:

Mozart, for Example

All the quick notes
Mozart didn't have time to use
before he entered the cloud-boat

are falling now from the beaks
of the finches
that have gathered from the joyous summer

into the hard winter
and, like Mozart, they speak of nothing
but light and delight,

though it is true, the heavy blades of the world
are still pounding underneath
And this is what you can do too, maybe,

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart
in the cumbered neighborhoods or even,
as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace,

offering tune after tune after tune,
making some hard-hearted prince
prudent and kind, just by being happy.
from Thirst by Mary Oliver

illustration by Maira Kalman