Today's poem is by Kathleen Winter

Among the Neglects
       

A bird pierces holes into silence, a damaged organ goes
to oblivion, compelling a lifetime of adjustments.
I'd forgotten you this year, till Firth's Darcy rode from a lost century
to deliver you to my night vision: handsomest dead man I ever saw,
sitting in your last living room with friends.
My own body of gum and sap now ambered—an ancient insect
jewels my core in the vitrine's measured light.
Stilled past harm, it shares dregs of regard with other tongueless wonders.
I divide honey-cake with a silver knife but taste only metal,
recalling how I was assured this outcome is the preferred alternative—
as though a wound could be neutered by one clean adjective.
As though mortality, by being general, becomes tolerable.

As though mortality were neutered by being general,
as though one tolerable verb could clean the wound.
Recalling how I was assured this outcome is the preferred alternative,
I tasted only metal, dividing honey-cake with a silver knife.
Sharing dregs of regard with other tongueless wonders,
my stilled core: past harms measured in the vitrine's light.
Jeweled by an ancient insect, now the gum and sap of my body,
ambered. In the living room with last friends, you're the dead
handsomest man I ever saw, delivered to my night vision
by Firth's Darcy, piercing his century. I'd forgotten you this year—
a lifetime of compelled adjustments. An organ goes to silence;
a bird riddles oblivion with holes.

Copyright © 2025 Kathleen Winter All rights reserved
from The Shore
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission