Susan Pilewski

NEVER


Loss, sharp as the pinpricks we call stars, although sometimes we mistake a planet for that celestial moment. -Kimiko Hahn

If I turn to tell you something born for your ears
and you are not there to receive it because the Giants are behind
by a point spread so vast, no self-respecting bookie would touch it,
then do my words exist?
Say what you will about trees falling in empty forests.
I am talking about you two rooms away and counting.

I stand in the doorway and watch your body flicker and fade in milky blue light

Lear knew best the value of nothing when he bade his Cordelia speak again.
Most of us lack the courage to dig for the answers we want,
nothing will come of nothing-and its companion, never.

Your body bathed in light.

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!

Light.

No savior yet contrived to unite them at the gates of heaven
just flurries of never spilling through an indifferent sky
upon which is pressed a sickle of moon
poised to tear a hole through the veil of night and all her stars.

Susan Pilewski is a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. She teaches writing at SUNY Stony Brook and is co-host of Poetrybrook US (www.wusb.org). She is an editor of Rio: A Journal Of The Art and is the winner of the 2003 writing constest sponsored by Stony Brook's Institute for Medicine in Contemporary Society.
 

Poetrybay seeks fine poetry, reviews, commentary and essays without restriction in form or content, and reserves first electronic copyright to all work published. All rights to published work revert to the author following publication. All Email submissions should be in body of email text.

To submit poems write to:

PO Box 114 
Northport NY 11768
or email us at 
 info@poetrybay.com

send comments to info@poetrybay.com

first electronic copyright 2004 poetrybay. 
all rights revert to authors

website comments to dpb@islandguide.com