Storm

We are staying up late, my young daughter
and I, to watch and listen—sleepy
though we are—to the summer lightning
storm outside, which flashes matchstick quick
and seemingly at random across each
small window of the flimsy French doors.
This light show is far more exhilarating to her
than the storybooks stacked beside us,
which wait patiently until the world
becomes once again calm and ordinary,
in need of retelling, embellishment, magic.
For now, we wait, counting out loud
the seconds between flicker and crash,
the dark shoulders of trees and angled outlines
of rooftops, lit up for a moment, then gone.
When we startle, it is merely with delight.
We do not speak—not now, not today—
of the horrors seeping from the evening news,
the once unimaginable now commonplace,
school children crouched under desks,
their backpacks cradled close, utilized as shields
against a hail of bullets from every direction.
For now, the danger is far less specific.
For now, we are snug and safe in this
boat of a bed, letting the wild wind-swept
currents surrounding us have their say,
our small, indeterminate patch of the universe
throwing off sparks, shifting, nearly breaking
apart, reminding us of what we live within.
When the storm at last seems spent,
I rise to close the curtains, the plastic moon
of a nightlight standing in for the one
we cannot see. Though we know it’s there,
as the stars are still there, and the faraway sun
of tomorrow, like all good things,
and it’s enough—for now, for now—
to rest, at ease in that simple knowing.

by Greg Watson

Editor’s Note: This sweet narrative holds a terrifying fear at the center that the speaker nevertheless must move past, again and again, because hope is the first and last lesson of parenthood.

Sitting with my Sister

When I received the news today of your
passing—a fact somehow known, viscerally,
before I touched the phone to listen—
I wanted only to keep it to myself,
to not speak to anyone during those
long, slow-moving minutes, their silence
demanding only more silence,
their time, more time. I wanted to hold
you there, secretly, perhaps selfishly,
between that cave of heart and ribcage,
to hold you suspended like a single breath,
or a seed which I was neither able to
swallow or spit out. I wanted to cradle
that moment, inseparable from you,
hovering like a thought not quite formed, not
simply for the sake of sparing others,
but to sit with you one last time, as we had
near the end in your tiny apartment,
too quiet for you, and those drugstore
Christmas lights blinking on and off
against the smoky California sun.
I wanted merely to sit with you once more,
just us, before picking up the phone,
handing you back to the world of
the living, the realm you had so recently
left behind, weightless and wordless
now, suddenly beyond the endless
aches and ailments of matter, your absence
only beginning to make itself known.

by Greg Watson

Editor’s Note: When grief happens, poetry is often the only thing that can describe the moment that suspends love between present and past. This poem’s concise imagery offers that moment as both eulogy and lament.

The Buggy

You won’t remember now being quite
so small, combing that long stretch of Carolina
sand for rocks, shells, anything shining,
the ocean insistently whispering its secret
language, untranslatable upon land.
Nor will you recall the wheels of your stroller
edging closer and closer to the waves,
so slowly that none of us took notice,
none but that stout Eastern European woman
in head scarf, waving her thick arms,
shouting in alarm, “The buggy! The buggy!”
For one flashing moment, my heart leapt
like a startled fish, believing she might actually
be right, that you might be spirited away
by the unforgiving Atlantic, back to Scotland
or Wales, the fabled white cliffs of Dover,
closer to your family’s ancestral home,
but further from the ones who love you here.
But, of course, you were right there
when we turned to look, your beach hat
shielding your eyes, your chubby legs
just beginning to learn what they’re for,
ready, soon enough, to carry you anywhere.

by Greg Watson

Editor’s Note: Every once in a while a poem reminds us of why life is worth living.

When, For a Moment, I Grow Weary

When, for a moment, I grow weary
from the endless news reports of bombs
dropping from bleak winter skies
and the faceless tanks nudging their way
through streets clogged with rubble,
I turn my mind instead back to that little girl
cradling her ragged doll at her side, there
in the long silence of the subway tunnel
that for tonight has become her bed.
I want to tell her that everything will be alright,
even if that is another bedtime fable,
to sing to her gently, in her own language,
as I would to my own child, who sleeps
at this moment in a warm tangle of sheets,
mouth agape, dreaming, I imagine,
of flight, and of saving this broken world.
I have not yet found the perfect words
or melody to make this promise happen,
cannot quite decipher my own voice
through a distance as great as this,
this lullaby merely a litany of questions
turning endlessly back upon itself.
Is the lesson simply that we learn no lessons,
that the old names must soon be worn
smooth to make way for the new?
Still, I continue, offering the only comfort
I can summon, the stubborn light of
one still standing, unable to turn away.

by Greg Watson

Editor’s Note: War’s human face is inevitably sorrowful.

Photograph by Christine Klocek-Lim

Brother Song

Brother, have you at last earned
the peace and solitude
which somehow eluded you
on this side of the earth?
Perhaps you speak now in ways
I cannot hope to understand:
the repeating parentheses
of gently falling snow,
insistent pulse of a birch tapping
against the window glass,
sudden shock of a crow wing torn
and frozen to the sidewalk.
You, who saved up your words
like trinkets for a rainy day,
offer no reply but this,
the space you have shaped
to your former image.
Or perhaps your silence has
become your song at last,
the one you had been secretly
rehearsing all along.

by Greg Watson

Editor’s Note: Beautiful imagery carries the grief in this poem with careful hands, emphasizing how loss never quite feels like the right ending for the living left behind.