One of the enduring assumptions about poets is that we are morose, morbid beings, preoccupied with death and bongos. I’ll concede that we occasionally betray a certain haunted look. But I’d wager that everyone is just as obsessed as poets are with what lies beyond the veil; they simply never record those ruminations on paper. Most people remain adrift, so to speak, with nothing but the brief social rituals of funerals to metabolize all their complex feelings of dread, remorse, grief and just plain pain.
My personal theory is that, rather than dismissing poetry about death as morbid, people actually crave it. We all need a way to make sense of something so enormous that science, religion and philosophy cannot touch it, not really, not beyond speculation. People are so drawn to poetry about mortality because it doesn’t offer solutions. Poems acknowledge death, wave to it, invite it up onto the porch to sit for a spell.
Here, I and a few other local bards do just that.
— Ben Aleshire
After I Died
my braid came loose—
stormwater jolted
through my lashes,
shoes, serviette
the sweetest creatures came to see
the science of me
fretted
quieted
sank
broodily down—
a terrier
who knew me
for my aura
from across the park
was tugged away
I became a set of teleprompts
for a woman in makeup
who’d only had coffee
and hadn’t slept enough
the maid received a tip for
dredging my body’s
surrounds
my softest shares were gentled first
on the sea floor
and later, disarmament
of tooth and claw
I was a castaway for centuries
till they scared up
my bones
& puzzled at my cloistered rest—
I collected
as if I were a child again—
insects, pine cones, moss
sticks, shells, rocks
mushrooms, grasses
red & yellow flowers
After forty years
I came up ably
with the plow
dry and yawning
I froze into stone
was never brought home
someone wrote a poem—
— Elisabeth Blair
Condolences
I received a condolence card
from the obstetrics office that said,
We’re so sorry for your loss. Know that all
will happen in its own time. This isn’t because of
anything that you did.
Aunts, friends, and web pages insist that it was not my fault.
I don’t think it was, but sometimes I suspect it anyway,
and I walk through the methods I might have used
to kill my children: the booze before we knew,
letting the doctor pull the IUD, packing
and lifting boxes of poetry
and art history books, trying to muscle
twins out of the deal. Whatever.
I wish they had been tougher.
The grim reaper
must have shrunk so small to harvest them,
scythe the length of an eyelash.
— Meg Reynolds
She Asked What It Will Be Like
I said it would be a slow unsnarling
color of a clear sky at dusk, deepening
full and freeing
both toward and away from words
worry, the family, the future
grind of gravel beneath her feet
sting of wind, ache in the marrow
the moon will rise inside you
while other voices ebb, I said
it will be peace, I think she fell asleep
or maybe she retched a little
into a small cup held to her lips
then I slipped away
or kissed her, at least touched
her hand, having given an answer
full with an extravagance
of emptiness, like a bowl up to the brim
where truth would have been
— Alison Prine
First Winter
Your first winter up north, you dream you’ll die.
You walk when you could drive, stand in the middle
of the frozen lake, chilled through the coat
of mossy worsted that was too warm to wear back home;
come in with frostbite on your little finger.
It is miserable, like in a book.
The nights swallow the helpless days,
but the misery is not quite yours yet:
more someone else’s you are trying on.
It is, for now, almost a relief.
Your first winter, one night, you see it,
set into a filthy snowbank plowed up as tall as you:
the big dead chicken, its feathers burnished green and gold.
For a moment, you are sure you have to save it.
For a moment, you forget it’s only cold that keeps it.
— Sam Hughes
Telegram to a Suicidal Friend
— Ben Aleshire
The original print version of this article was headlined “Passing Thoughts | Vermont poets share verses about death”
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This article appears in The Death Issue.
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