Solo Dirge for Voice     

 

 

Their youthful deaths: heart attack

and drowning, press furiously

into our bruised solitary caverns,

tears last only in time, but this weight,

this weight crescendos down

through generations of grief

after he died, I

spent hours digesting the fat of day

simmering into a stew, seasoned with

how the sky might have been falling

But these two loves, these two

close in time,

ripped from life

with no sirens or drum rolls,

steal our rhythm

cripple our pulse of living, and still

I collect time into little pools

dive in gathering together

the missing curve of his lips

absent warmth of his arms

I believe this is where we are, this now,

this here is heart, center of everything,

life starts one day, one second,

ends another day, another second,

we forget, inhale, exhale

into the delicate cadence of infinity

I arrange memories on the smooth

white paper of my thoughts

re-creating scenes

capturing moments,

Their two souls went easy, soaring

into forever, didn’t look back,

remembering as naturally as light

backs up to dark, their jobs

were finished. May we, here, open

into the comfort grief brings with it.

tenderly etching the secrets

of our love stolen

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Sharon Lopez Mooney, Dirge for Solo Voice, From 'California Quarterly Poetry Review', California State Poetry Society, vol. 48, no. 1, ed. etal: Terry Ehret, Maura Harvey, Alice Pero, Margaret Saine, Maja Trochimczyk,  Sunland, California, 2022

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