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