miss daisy

for kay and sean


one wants to look sidelong at death
as something partially visible
or only distantly heard
a cruel inexorable seacliff far off,
privately owned

i'd like to speak and never be at a loss
for words, negotiate sadness as easily as children
trace around the periphery
of their outstretched hands with crayon
as sure as i am unsure

trail a tangible border around the contour
of her absence
inscribe a shining rim along the verge
of her diminishing quiddity
that is so lonesome and purifying
and colossally clear
so simple and frank and and transmittably solacing

that it would enfold you in its sepals
and bestow you with a curative and anaesthetic pollen
while blocking out everything not germane
to the magnitude of your vital
and wooly grief

and afterwards set you down gently
in the afternoon sun
blinking and swaying as if after
the saddest of matinées

into a redolence awash with clarity and collapse
sending you luminous and fierce
and altered and amplified
into the new usual