Author’s Note: When my parents were dying and thereafter, the poems I read about loss used particular metaphors, and columns about mental health suggested cultivating everyday gratitude, especially during difficult times. I found myself wondering why they left me feeling such a void within. Why did certain words bother me? Why did the notion that everyday gratitude would ground me seem so misplaced? I wrote Unyielding Love in response.
Unyielding Love
Poetry, do not give me words like these:
bittersweet, brambles, barren;
thorns, vines, terrain. Or these:
light, stars, moon;
burgeoning, birth, deliverance;
soothe, navigate, praise.
Nothing that signals that, since you understand,
you have a suggestion, an answer even:
All I need to do is follow, is believe,
is open my eyes, is be astounded
by your life/my life/life,
is accept that your wisdom
can replenish the—
not this word either—vessel
that I am.
Also, not gratitude—as in,
gratitude will anchor you.
I have seen, as if in a mirror on a curve,
that what is coming
is not stoppable.
May, in fact, be a beginning.
Today, I finished with soups and teas,
with clean sheets and towels and antiseptic wipes;
with nighttime waking and dosage schedules,
with ice packs and heating pads,
with reverent awe.
What I have witnessed is what anchors me.
Her last breaths. His open eyes, not reflecting.
And what filled me with the peace
I think you mean when you say, gratitude,
was caring for them, was believing
that unyielding love was power.
It is a cloud with nothing left
below to water or shield.
♦
Catherine DeNunzio’s poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from The Robert Frost Place, Connecticut River Review, Italian Americana, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Scapegoat Review, and Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis. Her chapbook, Enough Like Bone to Build On (Antrim House), was released in 2022. Website: www.instagram.com/catherinedenunziopoetry
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