Poetry Friday: Of Husbands, Loss and Friendship

Iphigene Here.

A few Poetry Friday’s ago I posted an original poem entitled An Unsent Letter to the Widow. The reception to the poem was warm and has motivated me to share for today’s Poetry Friday (as hosted by Sherry of Semicolon) the companion poem to it.

When someone dies we build relationships with people who share memories of the one who passed away. That shared experience, that sentiment can bloom to a new connection. In A Widow’s Reply I thought of  how she would receive the letter, would she notice that the writer (her husband’s friend) was holding back so much more than he could say? I thought of how they can keep the relationships forged earlier on when the husband was living and clumsily sustained after.

Once again, this is a COMPANION POEM, if you haven’t read the first one, feel free to visit it here.

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Note: Hyphens were placed to indicate space. WordPress has been acting up and I can’t seem to get it give me spaces between stanzas.

A Widow’s Reply©

Do you eat well? Or has depression

Overtake you? He used to boast of your words—

Poetic, flowery, alive and bursting

With images he can barely describe,

But your letters,

They’ve gone dry.

He’d force you to write lines

For him, to tell me of the day’s

Toil and routine

For he knew you’d find the way

To make today,

Not like any other day.

–

How my child would love

To hear you speak of the sunlight,

The lady sweeping the streets,

Or the man on his bicycle

Pedaling to the sound of an old

Sinatra song. But how can I impose,

Your letters, though civil,

Lukewarm and proper have

Filled the void of my mailbox—

He used to fill it so.

–

And though strange lands you’ve

Gone have left you with no words,

I wish you more—

For you are no widow, though friend

You loss, need you suffer like me?

He would have love to see you married,

Run away with a blushing bride

And I’d be there, like he’d be

At your side. Go!

out and enough

With your somber life!

–

I say this with affection,

As a sister to a brother she

Has long not seen. Find solace in this,

That though your nights may be cold

And the mornings hard to go by,

That I wait,

here for your letters,

And know,

You have so much more.

–

Much more than your tempered letters

Could say.

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