Home Alone

The warm cave of the apartment

with windows shuttered and doors locked

is safe from visits and chatter

outside, downstairs, and all places

that call urgently and sweetly,

imagining themselves to be

gardens of growth, power, delight

or special companionship.

It’s not always seasonal, this

wish to see gardens remotely

from the safety of the cavern’s

thick walls, with chinks large enough to

look out but too small to disturb

a languid and healing darkness. 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Haiku After the Rain

Peony in rain by Randi Hausken

Ground gives underfoot.

No longer may nurture hide

its small beginnings.

~

Even the flowers

who sleep among sturdy weeds

awaken and stretch.

~

The sun insists on

warming green leaves and blossoms.

Pink petals unfurl.
 ~

What was forsaken 

and pale scents the atmosphere

and offers rainbows.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Restoration

source

Home from my travels with coffins and ghosts,

I contend with strangers and vacancies.

Friends were too quick to claim mortality—

they leave vacuums where they should have stayed

for a longer while.  It’s so silent here.

A wind came through yesterday, stripping trees

of their weak limbs.  Debris lies in broken piles

of lilac, maple, cherry, and catalpa,

labeled with a few green leaves here and there,

messing up the freshly-mowed green lawn.

Relatives of the deceased clean downstairs,

and tomorrow workers will groom the yard.

None of the bustle will remove the quiet;

none of the cleanup will restore the past.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

Saying "Rest in Peace"

I.

We look at your empty

source

shell on your deathbed, say

“Rest in peace” as if soul

or spirit waits to hear,

and bow our heads to pray

for safe travels once more.

Yet half of us believe

the trip ended just as

the breath left the body,

and half of us believe

there are no places to

travel to after death.

And we all know death has

altered reality,

that the period on

the end of your story

gives us license to change

it, to embroider with

the memories and roots

you've left behind. We all

take home a piece of you

to weave into our lives

differently than we did

before—as a pure gift.

When we see your body

and say “Rest in peace,”

maybe we say it to

ourselves. Maybe it is

our own soul, our own safe

travels for which we pray.

II.

You are at peace.  I saw
you smile.  I heard  you greet
the ancestors the day
before, while music still
spoke to you from this side.
I saw you wish us peace.

Here still, I pray for peace.
I feel more gratitude
than I can speak of
and say "Rest in Peace"
for all of us—for you
and for me.  Forgive me.

I felt you forgive me
when your hand gripped my hand.
I saw you do the same
to all, saw those around
receive it through tearful
eyes—love, plain and simple.

Such a peaceful dying
and leaving.  I stand with
my God.  I hold the hand
of Jesus in front of
your closed coffin.  I say
the "Rest in peace" with all.

The room is crowded with
the closest relatives
and their beliefs, their gods,
their lives and their love.
Only goodness is here.
The air we breathe is sweet.

III.

I must have been dreaming
a minute, not to hear
the conversational
tone of the gathering—
one talking about jobs,
another about cars.

Drowned in the familiar—
one bulb out over the
coffin, one dirty podium,
deodorant spray and
elevator music—
but the birds sang louder.

First I cried for fakeness,
and then cried for myself—
and then noticed a change
as seats filled and people
leaned in to hear one man's
story of a jackknife.

Our dearly departed
put a jackknife along
with fifty dollars in
this grandson's car and said
Keep them on the driver's
side, and keep them hidden.

He was grinning about
his good relationship
Stories were then traded,
and I was done crying
for the moment.  Resting
in peace.  Resting in peace.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast