In Mourning Poem by Caroline Misner

For Julia Dickinson
1923-2009



All the subplots of your life
come grieving now into this room.
The scent of white roses
marries the weather of their sorrow;
the candles leak their wax like tears.

The rain has ceased and the birds
emerge from their habitations;
they’re in mourning for the night’s
ruin that beat its grievous song
upon the roof of this little barn
you will never see again.

Here is the man
who ate cake with you
for sixty years, entwined
his life with yours.
He can barely stand, leaning
on his walking stick, escorted
through the door by your son,
grey haired and middle-aged.
And here is his wife, the fatuous
hostess dressed in blue,
nails slathered in scarlet, greeting
the mourners in the queue.

And here are the granddaughters,
paired like marble bookends, alternating
the verses of a poem that reminds
them of you.
And here is the nurse in green scrubs
who cared for you the last nights of your life
the way a gardener tends a plot of weeds.

How good of her to make an appearance;
she senses a storm is coming
and so she scatters a handful of seed.