12.30.2019

your glance will not be replicated



Nadezhda Mandelstam
FOR HARRIET, FOR LIDIA
          to Lena Archer & Barbara Swanson

This falling snow at end of year
seals all our doings
& rememberings
with soft imprint of upper atmosphere.

Each snowflake is a face, or signature
disintegrated from the sky
from Ocean’s continuity
come down to live, to die – to melt, unsure

back to the common spring (indifferent
& all-encompassing).
Watch generations passing
with the calendar.  Grandma, bent

to join her friends again (under
the ground).  & we are left
to plow along... to heft
the load she bore, so bright & clear.

Your glance will not be replicated
nor your smile rehearsed.
The gentle ones, who nursed
each flower into breath, are translated

beneath an arc of sapphire sky
into their immortality –
embrace each earthy
being-born, each learning how-to-die.

There are these women... limping
over the frozen steppe.
See how they leap
now!  Lifting off... (on seraph wing).

12.30.19

No comments: