Misgivings
It’s all bird brains
and the circle of life,
but a mother still flutters
in desperation above,
her babies swept in the wake below
Death is nuanced,
with its panic and longwinded sprint
to nothingness
Grief is cruel.
A mother stops flying,
her screeches barn swallowed,
now barren and directionless
watching in quiet agony
as the boat floats on
I cry for spiders and worms
when a mother feeds them to her young
I cry for little eggs
at the bottom of a lake
05-01-24
Mouth running like mascara,
hair tucked securely in the past,
she reaches for me with dewdrop skin
though it’s still not safe
Rest now
He shifts in bed until his feet,
now thick with summer heat,
hang just out of reach like forgiveness
I plant his brittle spine
into a nest of pillows
like a baby bird and he squawks
Rest now
Wiping the lunch from his face,
I think of how we are all children
taking leaps of faith
even after science shows us
that clouds aren’t beds of cotton
Rest now
Fly later
7-9-20
A familiar feeling
A familiar tone of voice
It’s soft and even
As you leave a message
For her to digest later,
As if it’s something she can pass
As if it’s something you’ve already chewed
“Another one?”
Yes. Another.
Another kid turned man,
Cigarette in hand no matter
How many times you tried to put it out
Another laugh rippling through the cosmos,
Ripping through a family like heavy wind and rain
Because even laughter is a storm
Once it’s a memory
It’s all loud and grey and uncontrollable
And no matter how many times you’ve seen it happen
No matter how many ways you saw it coming,
You’re never prepared
6-15-19
Tired
the kind of tired
where even your ribs ache
from holding it in
I breeze through a cemetery
where dandelions push
their blonde heads
toward the sun
to remind us
that life goes on
Even though I am not ready to move on
I have already watched you fade
into the old you and grieved
at the foot of a stranger’s plot
I am tired of losing you
So I leave you here, where I can visit
and remember the times when your eyes
kept me in focus
and forget the times when
they pushed me
into the periphery
5-10-20
Gretchen Pleuss 