Poem For The Dead

On All Souls Day, we remember those whom we have loved.  This poem-even its title indicating a beloved person who committed suicide-reminds me of my loved ones who have departed the earth.  My father and mother are still alive, but I always thought of my grandparents as parents because their values were the ones strong enough to pull me back to a good life- even after a youth of straying:

 Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al

I’ve sensed ghosts more than once,

      their presence

a kind of plucking from the memorious air.

 

Always they reveal themselves as lost,

       surviving

on what’s loose in me, some last words

I never said, some I did.  I’ve heard

          they can’t live

if fully embraced, if taken fully in,

 

yet I do nothing but listen to their

           wingless hovering,

the everything they never say.

 

If only I could give them what they need,

         no, if only

I could convince myself these things

 

must die as naturally as apples

         on the apple tree…

but that’s in Nature, which is never

wrong, just thoughtless and without shame.

by Stephen Dunn