Coda (II)

Everyone was saying to stop being so in love 
with the sound of lament, to stop seeing loss
at the edge of the roses, the morning sky

gathering the blues it would bleed into black
to remind us how deep space was, how long
it would take to go back to the beginning

when memory hadn’t happened, nothing
had been chosen, there were just cells
working their version of the miracle 

of bread & wine, a comforting way 
to think of flesh & blood, that the world
would take & eat, yes, everyone was saying, 

you should think of it like that, think of
yourself as part of the some universal
communion, lift up your heart & host 

to the mystery. So I listened to warblers
in the oaks, watched hummingbirds feed
on sweetened water. I whispered to those

who no longer called through my sleep
or my waking sleep because they were 
making their way over river & mountain, 

field & plain, singing, faintly, 
the way bone will sing on air.
A slight whoosh, then quiet. 

Lynne Knight | Contents
Mudlark No. 62 (2017)