Eulogy for the Present Body

What do we say in solitude?
When we're snowed in
and feeling loss?
The celebration was beautiful of David's life
something that could only be molded
from the exquisite eccentricity that was
our childhood;
from the homemade wine,
from marriages that have broken but
given threads of firelight
just for the night
were sewn together.
There was closure in the old wood beams,
in the house and office
that were always like a second or third home
to my own.

And later in the calm of fleece sheets,
laying dry from excess drinking
and jubilant mourning,
we ladies of the house discovered
yet another man gone.
Yet another love,
a close one.

It is strange to not know pain beyond
your own sphere--
not war nor genocide or things so horrible
they become normal.

But I sit here being challenged.
Feeling life stronger and more intensely
because two have now advanced
from what we know.
I see photos of Hunter
and see him smile, feel him passing.
I feel my family on a different coast,
and cannot do much more
than love.

Sunsets are electric when the air is polluted
and the white banks gleam wildly
in the whites of our eyes.
There is strength here within us,
immense and penetrating strength.
There is also loss and sadness and pain.
But there is light coming through
the shadows of the barren trees
and we who are here,
we are the ones who rouse,
who wake from sleep
to rub our lashes
and feel the soft airs of change.


e. chayes

Leaving Jam and Toast to Wake my Soul Cold

I live with bamboo lining the deciduous hill
a sign that strange things
can be
and should be
where they're meant to be.

In this robust weather
when the desolate is flattered with frenzy,
their pliant stocks sway against stone walls
moving like molasses
on an ancient glacier.

I had to shake the foreign leaves
to see how still they could be.
yet in the magic of morning,
they shivered dusted fairies.

Clumps lifted from gravity's gaze,
the clouds purging.
what fell to me was wild calm
my body leaping into little movements
to taste just some.
but the fat sky squeezes in so many ways
that my control was handed over
and I had to laugh when the spotted gray
kissed me wetly.


e. chayes