Poem ending on a Preposition

merridawn duckler

Poem ending
on a
preposition

Peace to the orchard and the dead.

We shall not nag them anymore.

– James Wright

Someone said, grieving now? just wait ‘til year seven.

Here it comes. I’ve no more desire to write it down

& fix the font & count the words & send it out

& have the memory declined than I did at year one.

First voices fade, his pitched to wind,

the concentric knothole in the table

across from me right now,

drowns like wax within the candle.

Then notions fade, like a crap TV procedural where they easily

reconfigure a skeleton of a child

& you know, in your heart,

this is not how a child is constructed.

The last to fade is topic, as we prop his ideas

against the current realm

& everyone makes their sad guess

but mine is saddest & right.

Then nothing fades,

for that is the nature of nothing,

a well of rich water

we were built to never see the end to.

Merridawn Duckler is a writer from Oregon and the author of Interstate (Dancing Girl Press), Idiom (Washburn Prize, Harbor Review), and Misspent Youth (Rinky Dink Press.) Her new work is featured in Seneca Review, Interim, Posit, Plume, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She was the winner of the Beullah Rose Poetry Contest from Smartish Pace. She’s an editor at Narrative and at the philosophy journal, Evental Aesthetics.

merridawn duckler

Poem ending on a Preposition

merridawn duckler