Greg Schmult
The glyphs leaf out hard and once only
with sterile serifs on the vine
of her memorial. A never-
garden, and you a living statue among
rigid perennials, the orderly riot of the unliving
growth of past years’ life
and the double-sided staring stone
the burnish of its granite face
flecked-on rose with black and white
you beside your wife, who paid
full price five years ago.
How do you begin to belong here?
Do you discern the shape resolving
the one your absence leaves
like a mold emptied of its bronze?
Have you found the right words for that
which has no words, just
an incoherent label, already written
slabbed and low, a dreadful and specific
patience?
So much room for you to stand
as the lawn keeps safe for you its latent void
in the yard of the folly
the grave-studded trompe l’leil.
***
Greg Schmult lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he works as an environmental consultant. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Hanging Loose, Iodine, Poetry Quarterly, Spillway, and The Main Street Rag.