-- I seldom do.

A great and terrible suffering:
it's small in the hands of God,
(who shaped Emily Dickinson as a forethought
and now makes trees to bury new poets under)
because we have all had high hopes,
low brows, and mid-realms where we stored
our own fantasies -- the ones we breathe
-- and places where we...

but I saw you slutting around with
your sister Katherine and my Aunt Kim
in my dream and you're paying attention
to all of them, but not me, again;

I have ached for years to remember how
your voice sounds when you're telling
me to come visit more,        or that
you've made dinner (if I'm hungry)
and we all know I've just eaten, or

have we forgotten by now; by now
we are heroines in our own minds, and we die
just like you -- just with anthologies
bearing a name we once held and owned
and a soul we once loved and used;

I ought to do something extravagant
that'll save the world and your soul
all at the same time, and I ought to

remember that these great sufferings that
we all suffer through, were all for you,
and Grieving is such a pretty word
when it's written down; I

should remember how it looks on paper,
but I seldom do.