Aria at the Close of Grief
The night’s weight is the ocean’s easy burden. Pearls
are a weight in the beggar’s pocket when he searches for bread.
The reassurance of the lighthouse, and the tap of the otter
eating abalone are semaphores of sorrow.
The sear of my dying mother’s face
another kind of weight, like a necklace of tongues--
unspeakable the burden of her pain,
her hands curled like day lilies.
The moon writes on the sea
in a language I cannot decode.
The moon’s weight is the ocean’s
easy burden, but the weight of her silence
can be unbearable as I walk the clock
face of this land. Watch as her footprints
disappear in wet sand.
The body’s horizon is a sea frothing
into pelicans bobbing out on the tidal line.
A doily of foam across the full moon’s beam.
Grief does not close its doors,
only unhinges the bolts
from certainty.
Maria Garcia Teutsch’s collection, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judge: Heather McHugh. She is a poet, editor, educator and performance artist. She has published over 30 journals and/or books of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, and PingPongFreePress.
The night’s weight is the ocean’s easy burden. Pearls
are a weight in the beggar’s pocket when he searches for bread.
The reassurance of the lighthouse, and the tap of the otter
eating abalone are semaphores of sorrow.
The sear of my dying mother’s face
another kind of weight, like a necklace of tongues--
unspeakable the burden of her pain,
her hands curled like day lilies.
The moon writes on the sea
in a language I cannot decode.
The moon’s weight is the ocean’s
easy burden, but the weight of her silence
can be unbearable as I walk the clock
face of this land. Watch as her footprints
disappear in wet sand.
The body’s horizon is a sea frothing
into pelicans bobbing out on the tidal line.
A doily of foam across the full moon’s beam.
Grief does not close its doors,
only unhinges the bolts
from certainty.
Maria Garcia Teutsch’s collection, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judge: Heather McHugh. She is a poet, editor, educator and performance artist. She has published over 30 journals and/or books of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, and PingPongFreePress.