for Anya Krogovoy Silver
or didn’t because—on watch
these two, fifteen, forty years
for father, friends, me, you—
death still sneaks up and around
the already grieving, still
circles back in broad daylight, interrupts
bland conversations of let’s meet here
and when, then stuffs its filthy sock
inside shocked, lipsticked mouths,
halfway down throats
that keep gurgling hope,
keep spouting dates to a calendar
not-blank with Maybe plans. I watched you
not disappear when I was not
here nor there, on-time or late;
not hovering in the half-light of emergency,
the gray Rorschach of X-rays,
or the stiff uncertainty of chairs
lined up by un-sterilized bedsides
where I did not hold in my damaged heart
his final breath, her glassy stare,
their wispy half-spoken words
that mix with yours
in the broken laughter of your last
typed joke, which I didn’t see
until now when you reappeared—
just like that—on the stark screen
of this saved page,
your resurrected humor blooming
again and again and again.
–
Note: This poem’s title is the title of Anya Krugovoy Silver’s 2014 book from LSU Press; the poem’s last line alludes to her 2017 book, Second Bloom, from Cascade Books.
Marjorie Maddox, professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University and assistant editor of Presence, has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation; True, False, None of the Above; Wives’ Tales; and Local News from Someplace Else—as well as What She Was Saying (prose); children’s books; and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.