We sit on the sun porch
and watch the storm
roll in from the Rock River,
he with Jane Kenyon’s Otherwise,
her luminous poems about dying,
cradled in his lap,
a book I bought him on impulse.
He brings it with him
to the dinner table where he can’t eat;
it sits beside him
on the sofa when he watches TV.
His thin hand rests on its cover
as black clouds shiver and spin,
his own dying a few months away.
We don’t speak its name
though death slumps
near his shoulder, a weary angel,
and I want to tear at its wings,
beat it back with my fists.
But we sit in our wicker chairs
watching the summer storm
talking of nothing
while rain pelts the roof,
lightning splits open the sky.
A Southern California native, Lynda Riese lives in San Diego with her husband of
30 years and her two rescue dogs. She began to write seriously twenty years ago
and has poems published in Calyx, Onthebus, Poet Lore, and other small
press literary magazines in print and on the net.
She also enjoys writing prose, and has an almost-finished novel in stories gathering
dust in her desk drawer. When she’s not writing or taking endless photographs
of her dogs, she works as an antique dealer specializing in vintage and Victorian
jewelry.