JOAN HOFMANN

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Yann Allegre

Amen

I wonder at your pale slips shooting up: too soon?
Meagre spikes poke, stalking the icy snow holding
tight to forbidding coldness.

How brave you are, scant underlings, to endure
the brittle air, to bring your tentative risings
above ground for all to see.

I like your approach. Admire it. Your future insecure,
you push on overnight to bare probable failings
in full exposure.

Despite the bitter frost, your spirit oaths a spring turn
for me in depletion to borrow, an assurance of greenery.
Take the risk. I cheer you on. Tomorrow it’s my turn.

Holding On (at the Annual Community Grieving Ceremony)

Piles of rocks await our touch, grasp, grip 
by the doors splayed open to the chamber.
Greeted by caretakers known and new
we follow hand signals, hushed words
offered by soothing voices: As you enter,
choose a rock. Take it with you to your pew. 

We carry much these days, survivors
of this year’s loss of loved ones. 
Death brings us together. Binds us.
I helped two hospice patients die this year.
Do I take two? Loss remembers prior loss,
raises it to the surface from inner fathoms.

Though it’s been years, I think of my father
and take three. Later leaving the hall I return
two to the pile in the ceremony of communal
unburdening. I clutch the third, a granite oval,
pocket it to rub comfort from its aggregate,
to complete incompletion, feel composed.