anytime miss wish
after Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Miss you. Cd fetch you from the airport
anytime, yr tall curly head floating
toward me above the crowd. Tell me all
about New Orleans, Senegal.
Wd love to watch a Japanese film with you.
Even a violent one, just to sit
by you. Maybe rub yr bony shoulders
during. Pick it all apart after.
Miss you sprawled w the dog on the couch.
Chasing chickens, teasing cousins. Fixing
breakfast for yr friends, new ones, old ones,
banter & leap. Wish you could say miss you too.
Cd take me sailing finally, heel in high wind—
Mom, you can do it! Meet at kitchen table,
anytime, for a talk, the kind that wonders
through the years. Let me in? Miss this most.
Wd go out to eat w you, anywhere.
Even yr favorite sopping lasts-all-day
chicken burrito at Lucky Boy. You
lucky so long, then not.
Cd hold you when you cry. Hold
my tongue. Bring home help.
Spy you out the window
loping up the drive.
……
This poem is from the chapbook In the Mourning Grove by Susan Auerbach (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/in-the-mourning-grove-by-susan-auerbach/
In the Mourning Grove is a collection of #poems in the key of #grief that will resonate with anyone who has experienced #loss. From a young girl’s yearning for siblings to a middle-aged mother’s lament for her adult child, the poems bring lyricism, music, and spirituality to moments of heightened emotion. The first half of the book consists of poignant elegies to and about the poet’s son, Noah, who died by suicide at age 21. The second half explores a range of sorrows, from parents’ divorce and early deaths to various losses of innocence and the passing of a beloved pet. The book is a life-affirming beacon and companion for the grief that many of us carry, an invitation to venture without fear into—and beyond—the mourning grove.
Susan Auerbach is a retired professor of education who returned in midlife to her first love of creative writing. Her poems have appeared in Spillway, Gyroscope Review, Greensboro Review, and other journals, as well as in her memoir, I’ll Write Your Name on Every Beach: A Mother’s Quest for Comfort, Courage & Clarity After Suicide Loss (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017). She blogs at afterachildssuicide.blogspot.com and lives in Altadena, California, with her husband, dog, and chickens.
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