ravage

We are in the finishing stretch of the Tupelo Press 30/30 challenge. Day 26!
I'm blessed every day of every month of every year to have amazing, sensitive, loving and intelligent friends. Today's poem is for one of them. The NY Times word of the day is ravage, which as usual, makes me think of something outside of the actual meaning of the word. I think of how ravages can destroy you, or they can change you. I think of how having children ravages a mother, and changes us inexplicably. I think of the lack of black and white in it all.

ravage
for Joy

grief lurks in the lungs.
I follow you there
faster than before.

       everything was fine

we will sit and count
the wounds:
bodies. the tenderness.
unfastenings. cascades. letters.
the one who wouldn't let go
when you walked away.

     she would be open

there are dressings,
I say,
but you already know that.

you've already had to look away.
you live in your lungs
like I do now,
raking through
what we know
is already gone.

         i need you to take
         but not to let

when I think of you
I think of movement
across an ocean
in the brightest light of day
or lightning in a snowstorm.

        where I can once again feel

maybe you are a bird
or a planet
that we haven't yet discovered.
     
        as the new season approaches

maybe there are feathers everywhere.
you are gone again,
my dear friend.
disassemble, assemble and reassemble.
gathering speed and distance.