Ignorance and Bliss

Nothing like death striking too close to home (twice) to focus the mind on the unknowable.

Poetry is hard, at least for me. I've never published any, and rarely write any. If good prose is fermentation, poetry is distillation: a lot more complicated.  But the muse is inscrutable, and therefore surprising. I sat down at the keyboard for maybe 45 minutes, and a poem emerged more-or-less fully formed. It came into the world as any good child should, yelling and full of hope.

I offer it for my cousin Caron and her girls and Dave's girls and parents and students, for all the Barones, and for anyone bereaved. JB

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Ignorance and Bliss

What do we know anyway?

Our dead don’t come back and tell us.

Faith conceals as much as it reveals.

Our minds play tricks on us, our hearts ache,

and we wonder.

We wonder what sits atop the clouds and the blue sky and utterly dark cold infinity

We wonder how you are

We wonder if you see us, if you know us still

We wonder how this could have happened

Answers are not forthcoming. 

Maybe we know that nothing endures, but even in that finality

It would seem there are exceptions.

A smile across a kitchen table

Heartfelt wisdom freely dispensed.

A belly laugh, a caress, a kiss

Love waits with us at a bus stop in the rain

Love bails us out of the drunk tank at 2:00 in the morning

Love shuffles into the nursing home before dinner most weekday evenings.

Love reviews the algebra homework again.

Love splits granite, endures waves, transcends,

runs through our generations like electricity, like blood.

We know this as certainly as we know our mortality

Maybe that’s all we need.