I've learned a few ways to find it. The quickest is a drink, but the reception is shit. Delayed static. Always off just enough to know. The best is a song. If you find the right one, you're almost there. Just outside the dirty window. I see myself under the revival tent, watching Grandma offer a love song to Jesus. Her voice almost a whisper, just above the drunk auto-harp. Lulling it to speak with plastic fingertips, every string another word she could never say aloud. I took the hymnal off your bedside table, flipped through brittle pages, each now titled "I miss you."
grandparents
Haiku (1/11/2023)
Grandma's room. Bereaved dog licks my girl's hand, and we're together again.
William
Our silver station wagon
is peeled open and spilling
across Rogers Avenue
like a can of tomatos.
Bent through the window,
my father speaks glass and teeth.
My mother siezes in the
front seat. White eyes
of an oracle, quivering.
The phone rings on the
hospital wall. "How is she?"
a quaking voice asks.
The shock of my mother's
broken body speaks for me.
"We're fine," is all
I can say to the driver.
I still think about him
sometimes. A kid just out
of high school, he might
have children of his own
by now. The burden he must
still hold weighs on me,
and I wish he could see
my parents, smiling, as they
play with their grandkids.
For Ann
“My Grandmother once said that grief is the price we pay for love.” – Prince William
Dementia is a drunken playwright.
Constantly shifting timelines,
changing scenery.
Recasting your children.
Resurrecting your husband,
just to bury him again.
I watched from the mezzanine,
whispering to myself,
waiting for you to rise
from your chair, to walk
off stage singing like
you used to.
At your funeral today,
I forced myself to look
at your picture.
The one with the subtle grin.
The one that will hang
in corridors of my mind,
touching my thoughts
before I speak them.
Jon Humphreys Poetry 