Poem a Day: The Gathering

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Image result for running forest


I am running.
In my legs breaking tendons
Ligaments with a sound like torn silk
Stretch as I snatch for pieces of you to hold.
The gathering of fragile things; this is my harvest time.
In a stasis of light
My eyes are blind.
I am the seer who cannot see.
Weeping as time overflows its banks
in its tide, your small white body.
My father's hands, beaten and worn.
My grandfather's memories.

Grief is a lonely bedmate with cold feet,
And I will not, I will not have this.
The bridge supports me as I scatter
Fragments of my heart to the winds
Choosing a release. 
The fragments skim away,
leaving nothing behind but vacancy:
 the emptiness of soul.


This poem started as several journal entries in an old writer's notebook of mine. The entries were drawn from several traumatic events in my life: the death of a pet, the year my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, my grandfathers' (on both sides) battles with Alzheimers. I liked the juxtaposition of all of them with running, which is sometimes how I choose to deal with stress, by literally and figuratively running away. 



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