Such a curious word— breathtaking. To take
one's breath. Away. One can take precautions,
take five, take advice, take note; take pity,
take hostage... I too am floored by moments
called breathtaking. It can take so little for
that catch of breath in the throat. It's as though
a finger presses lightly inward at the hollow
center of your collarbone. And yes, all of us
have lost and grieved our dead. But recently,
I heard someone say that those who've wilfully
cut ties with us have also become as if dead.
That's the kind of grief I've been carrying,
since my firstborn stopped speaking to me
nearly four years ago now. But doesn't loss
imply a previous ownership; or if not ownership,
then a belonging? I grieve too over my inability
to lift the longsuffering of others I love,
whether from mental illness or anxiety or just
the everyday bludgeoning by life. On a train,
in a coach where the seats face away from
the direction it's headed, I watch the landscape
recede as if toward the past. Out here in rural
Virginia, horses and cows against brilliant
green; then hulls of houses gone to ruin
followed by rows of boxy apartments and squares
of parking lots. Back home, there's an amateur
telescope which we haven't used because of light
pollution. Here, I imagine nights unroll a dark
that could be truer dark. Nightfall means the onset
of night. But can I also think of it as the fall of
night? The fall of those forces which cloud our joy,
leave nothing warm even in spaces of abundant silence.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
