their laughter

Suddenly now there is death all surrounding,
Black as the field that my son set ablaze,
April fire’s holocaust, field mice exhuming,
Smoking like pipe dreams, umbrageous, consuming.
Two deaths must strike me inside of one week:
My friend, ninety three, beloved and true,
She of invincible strength and bright laughter,
She and a woman I barely yet knew:
Lung cancer, brain tumor, two months and it’s over.
Letters I tender to comfort and cheer,
One to the grief stricken spouse and his children:
You are all welcome, I write him, at my house.
The death of my friend, though, has wounded me deeply;
Glad as I am to have had her, I weep.

I would take comfort in Beltane’s samahdi,
Catch the quick crickets and fireflies of June;
Enjoined with July I’d make mad merry love
In my marriage of minds; or sigh and ingest
Whole symphonies’ scores of forgetfulness.
Let me trace blindly on sheets that would bind me
Azure skies broadly; or embrace in my dreams
Cobbled ways winding up where I’d be wending
Death’s honest highway, its most private parts,
Vending my wares on a street set apart.
Meanwhile at my house the children are playing;
Son of the husband whose heart is yet rending
Beams at my daughters and swing from the rafters,
Bursts through the seams of my grief with his laughter.

Mary Freeman

See her web site:
The Muse
 
 
 

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