Endings

Rene Stevenson

for Terri

I want to write a poem for you -
worthy of the years
you sat with me
once a week
on Tuesdays
at 8.15.

But this oblong
of paper is
too small.

I need a plane to announce it in smoke puffs
across the sky, or 150 people to spell it,
head-to-toe, over a wide field.

I want to take your hand, up thirty flights -
one for every year you have been a therapist-
show you my message in pebbles along the shore.

If I could I’d conjure Rumi,
with a ouija board, to help;
become Yeats for a day and do it the Irish way,
or hire the city hall,
an orchestra to play, a choir of angels to sing.

But I sit,
mute with gratitude -
a heart full of poems
and this empty page

a Zen monk says:
the poet sees here the tree -
sun and sky above,
humus, earthworms below;
sees, too, the treefeller,
and his wife humming over supper.

Do you see what I cannot say,
the invisible ink of love?

As you close your practice today
and I walk away,
I see you smiling welcome,
holding open the door

always, holding open the door

LitNet: 08 August 2006

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