Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week’s segment features Suzannah Walter.
Walter is a former Montessori teacher of 24 years and now spends her days writing poetry, songs and essays. She’s surrounded by literature at her Prairie Fox Books part-time job. Much of her work is influenced by her childhood years on the family farm. Walter lives with her husband, children and their dog, Lakota in Ottawa, Illinois.
Today she is sharing her poem “Good Grief.”
You appear in fits and flashes
around the edges of my everyday
like the velvet wings of a butterfly
against my cheek, followed by
a laugh, some praise, a wink
a remember when she did the thing
no one else would do,
could do,
will ever do,
again
you appear like a streak of sunshine
from behind passing clouds
greater than you ever were in life
worshipped by the people
closest to you
who thought they knew you so well
discovering you were human
only after you were dead
and realizing, even that, is a half truth
because trying to understand our own selves
leaves us baffled
on occasion, rarer now
a visit, when I am truly alone
an inkling in the gut
riding on tides of guilt and remorse
to the heart, that shatters
up, up, and up
where longing and sorrow
wrap their barbed wire around my throat
squeezing
offing the circulation to the brain
until all that love and gratitude and forgiveness
rushes out
my eyes,
my nose,
cries that will surely steal my breath
and kill me
but they don’t
and I float, eyes closed
until I can feel the sun upon my face
there are buds on the trees and lilacs in the air
and when I sing out to the mockingbird
she calls back
recognizing me
so small, on this massive earth
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
