On my mother’s death
You, who rest in measureless space:
tell me this room, dark attic above
can be the living place for love,
a brief hospice of grace.
This indoor air, too still to cross,
the hall too dark, the stairs too worn,
the silences too deep, have born
too long this weight, our cost.
I don’t know how to mourn your death;
it empties the room of so much grieving.
I feel a loss in my life leaving,
lingering in the exhaled breath.
And whispering here of you, I seem
to be in the home of a child, where shame
stands at the door, calls my name;
I cannot ever be redeemed.
Your bones, dear timbers, fall apart,
your cavities collapse, tired eaves
among the stones and leaves
in the hollow of our heart.
On a pedestal
Of all my lover’s lovely limbs,
my favorite are her feet.
Not many are so generous;
they’re honeysuckle-sweet.
Beside the gentle hummock
where her instep swoons to toes
looms an outcrop tender as
a yellow blooming rose.
A stand of digits shades my thumb,
appendages of heaven
a boulevard of bonsai trees
a canopy of sevens.
Here she heeled a sea urchin
(she sang, as I plied lotion)
see, his dark fleck lingers still –
kiss it, you’ll smell the ocean.
Their softness beneath a sheet,
pressure behind my thighs
are by comparison, effete.
It is her sighs
when they’re held. They’re not angelic
or a she-wolf-moan;
but the soft sound of a soul touching ground
in my hand on its way home.
Mid Walsh is a poet, singer, athlete, husband, and grandfather living near the ocean. With an English BA from Yale University and an MBA, he has conducted careers as a carpenter, a hi-tech executive, and a yoga studio owner. His poetry renders his life experiences into the music of language. Mid’s poetry is forthcoming in or has appeared in The Road Not Taken, Nixes Mate Review, Blue Unicorn, Silkworm, and Lily Poetry Review.
Sparks of Calliope 