Member Poem

The years are a mountain on my back
This once solid pillar now straining

beneath the weight of every coming dawn.
This version of death reveals itself like snapshots

in a photo album; nostalgia clings for space
in a room despair has already laid a wreath.

Here my hands carve my fear into my body, tracing
the lines of aches and pains born anew

snaking across the furrows of winking wrinkles,
and I learn how much resentment feels like a funeral shroud.

I learn of this shrinking; this sprawling
gracelessness, this curling into shadow.

I learn how wanting the things you can't have
becomes a mourning of its own.

Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.

(The title of the poem is taken from Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” and was first published in Isele Magazine)