My First Memory of Death
was perhaps the morning after
I took the evening’s pleasure
of capturing lightning bugs,
forcing shut the lid upon them,
watching their flashing beauty
dance upon my nightstand
'til I fell asleep in their glow--
not understanding at the time
that their temporal light
was created to be pardoned
from captivity in a Mason jar
and from my sorrow at finding
them in the early hours of dawn
asleep to rise no more,
their light-switch extinguished
in front of a child who once
had felt that all things bright
and beautiful will always last
just because we want them to,
unaware that we have no control
over the span of time we have
with people we love and cherish,
whose candescence stays with us
for a briefer spell than we grasp,
so we should find moments often
just to sit on the porch with them
under the evening’s obsidian sky
and watch their soul-lights dance.
I took the evening’s pleasure
of capturing lightning bugs,
forcing shut the lid upon them,
watching their flashing beauty
dance upon my nightstand
'til I fell asleep in their glow--
not understanding at the time
that their temporal light
was created to be pardoned
from captivity in a Mason jar
and from my sorrow at finding
them in the early hours of dawn
asleep to rise no more,
their light-switch extinguished
in front of a child who once
had felt that all things bright
and beautiful will always last
just because we want them to,
unaware that we have no control
over the span of time we have
with people we love and cherish,
whose candescence stays with us
for a briefer spell than we grasp,
so we should find moments often
just to sit on the porch with them
under the evening’s obsidian sky
and watch their soul-lights dance.
Hiraeth
I roll this Welsh word on my tongue,
hear its “r” undulate like the wind
afloat in autumnal trees on the ridge,
and I sense a meaning beyond sounds,
its untranslatable depth speaking to me
about this homesickness I feel inside,
dumbfounded with my mouth agape
as an echo rises from somewhere deep.
And I hold it to my heart like a blanket
as if it were a word that’s mine to keep,
though I know very well that it is not,
though its resonance brings me comfort.
But it’s larger than all our lives here--
we who have ever loved a person,
we who have ever loved a way of life,
we who have ever loved a homeplace.
It’s a bittersweet memory of something
now gone, something irretrievably lost,
the longing for a time no longer here,
a home that can never been recreated,
one to which you can never quite return,
even if you have all the old photographs
of how everything once sat in a room,
even if their fingerprints are on the walls.
It’s the music you hear inside your head
that you hope you never—ever—forget,
the nostalgia for those who are long gone,
those you never met, but you know them,
so you grieve for the lost places of the past,
carrying memory’s long trace of a homeland,
a people of one’s own blood and family,
and the old traditions and the lifeways.
It’s the distinct feeling of missing that
makes the now not the same as the before,
the lonesomeness both sorrowful and joyful,
that springs us gratitude for a beloved home
and for those who underwrote who you are,
leaving the resonance of steps in the hallway,
the clinking echoes of coffee cups on a table,
and memories of laughter in the living room.
hear its “r” undulate like the wind
afloat in autumnal trees on the ridge,
and I sense a meaning beyond sounds,
its untranslatable depth speaking to me
about this homesickness I feel inside,
dumbfounded with my mouth agape
as an echo rises from somewhere deep.
And I hold it to my heart like a blanket
as if it were a word that’s mine to keep,
though I know very well that it is not,
though its resonance brings me comfort.
But it’s larger than all our lives here--
we who have ever loved a person,
we who have ever loved a way of life,
we who have ever loved a homeplace.
It’s a bittersweet memory of something
now gone, something irretrievably lost,
the longing for a time no longer here,
a home that can never been recreated,
one to which you can never quite return,
even if you have all the old photographs
of how everything once sat in a room,
even if their fingerprints are on the walls.
It’s the music you hear inside your head
that you hope you never—ever—forget,
the nostalgia for those who are long gone,
those you never met, but you know them,
so you grieve for the lost places of the past,
carrying memory’s long trace of a homeland,
a people of one’s own blood and family,
and the old traditions and the lifeways.
It’s the distinct feeling of missing that
makes the now not the same as the before,
the lonesomeness both sorrowful and joyful,
that springs us gratitude for a beloved home
and for those who underwrote who you are,
leaving the resonance of steps in the hallway,
the clinking echoes of coffee cups on a table,
and memories of laughter in the living room.
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Danita DodsonDanita Dodson is an educator, literary scholar, and the author of two poetry collections, Trailing
the Azimuth (2021) and The Medicine Woods (2022). She is also the co-editor of the book Teachers Teaching Nonviolence (2020). Dodson’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Salvation South, Critique, Tennessee Voices Anthology, Amethyst Review, Heimat Review, Braided Way, Thin Spaces and Sacred Places Anthology, and elsewhere. She is a native of the Cumberland Gap region of East Tennessee, where she hikes and explores local history connected to the wilderness. Facebook // @danitadodsonauthor Instagram // @danitadodson Twitter // @DanitaDodson7 Website // www.danitadodson.com |