Time Machine: on the grief of friends

I am always torn between writing poems that create 'language wonder' and the impulse to 'console', to make real, to capture the flying slippery Heisenbergian fish that is human experience. Not that these things are mutually exclusive.

I was recently thinking about a friend's loss of her mother and read (on Facebook) a comment by writer Natalee Caple to a friend who was grieving about the sudden death of her brother. The exchange with this woman whom I only know very slightly through some email exchanges, was very touching. The tragedy of her brother's death is terrible and her grief is wrenching. Reading Natalee's heartfelt and consoling words, I had the impulse to write something. To console. 


I created this poem inspired by these lines by Natalee and thinking about our friends who are grieving.

TIME MACHINE
(for Nikki Reimer
after lines by Natalee Caple)

dear friend
I have invented

a third eye and
a new kind of footwear

also a time machine
I will save

the one you love
like a rabbit from a hat

I draw the words
from your lips

you tell me
where to be

what to do
I wear a long red cape

my new footwear
I pull my hands

out of the future
rest each finger like sky

on his resting body
he opens his eye

I open my eye
listen to his whispering

he knows you
he loves you

each star a guitar string
seen from inside