Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I asked my friend Deb for a poem idea.
“Death?” she replied. “LOL.”

 
I hadn’t told her it was intended to be a love poem.

Where is the place for death in a love poem?

 
Everywhere, of course.

 
In the fading light as summer draws to a close
In the toppled trees and cracked limbs that spared your baby nandina
yet killed a 10-year-old girl at a birthday party
In the daily Kaddish I still recite to mark my Father’s death
In the background noise of midlife’s diminishing curve of time-left
In the wishes, hopes and dreams that had to die to make room for
wishes, hopes and dreams newly born.

 
Because of death, poetry.
Because of death, music.
Because of death, dance.
Because of death, love.

 
Each non-dead day is the invitation:

 
To tend the hummingbird feeder, cultivate heavenly bamboo, plant purple carrots, search the night sky, awaken before dawn, learn a lover’s rhythms and stories, share poetry, pray at the chapel built where two bodies touch, see with the fresh eyes of 10-year-olds.

 
I accept.