The Weight

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We live backwards and forwards.

When the child was three,

I felt the weight of her against my chest,

Her legs dangling, her feet hitting my thighs

As I carried her sleeping form

From the car,

And I thought, Remember this.

Today, she's twenty.

She can lift me.

Sometimes, she sits her lanky self

On my lap,

And I feel the weight of her,

I wrap my spotty arms

Around her skinny waist

And I think, Remember this.

I'm reading Without,

Donald Hall's elegy of

Grief and remembrance and beauty

To his poet-wife Jane Kenyon,

Who died too young.

My beloved is on the phone,

Pacing from microwave to bookshelf

With his coffee cup.

"Yup," he says. "Uh, huh."

I hear his voice all day,

Every day,

Our desks just five feet apart.

Sometimes I, who lived so long in quiet,

Want quiet.

And I think, Remember this.

Let me write a pseudo poem

To hold on to the sound

Of his voice in the room.

There's time enough for quiet.

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Thank you to @Kcecelia and @BumbleWard, who led me to Donald Hall this morning.