The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.
The dullness
of this count does not mirror
the flash
of metal that cuts longing
into irregular slices
of grief.
No steady hand
can regulate how
it gets measured, how
another day will fold
open with his absence
now ink
that has set into the fibers—
bleeds and all.
Why count the piled-up
hours of grief? As I get closer
to our number 8—
another day
in the last month
of a depleted year—
I realize even tipped
on its side,
its resemblance
to infinity
is a mirage. Even 8
is not immortal.
The labor of breathing
without gasping
through these hollowed-out
days. The fear
of never being able
to recite the Serenity Prayer
again because of the way
the throat closes shut
before “grant me”
can escape. Just one more
bear hug, one more laugh
over lost cookies, one more
email exchange, just one
more hand squeezing, one
more simultaneous gazing
at the same full moon
while standing thousands of miles
apart, one more walk
side by side
would not be enough.
I surrender to this
grief and put my trust
in the wind still blowing
from those resilient wings.
Death’s got nothing
on them.
A lull toward late
fall, messages arrive
scrambled. Those born
on the light shrinking side
of winter solstice
carry an extra
burden. We must generate
an expanding light
from within. And it just might
illuminate the shoreline
for those of us now walking
the boards in the afterlife.
Less than a month to prepare
for a stretch
of 960 moments
that have lost
their luminescence.
I pick up
a flashlight and laugh
at the minor beam
I try to control. Dream
of a lighthouse
freed of its hurricane
ravaged land guiding me
to a place where he’ll be
walking on reconstructed boards
to the rhythm of the tide,
beckoning me
to catch up to him.
On this
election day
I break the golden rule
that poetry and politics
don’t mix.
Counting
days since you died
maps a steady rhythm
to follow as I breathe through this
dense grief.
You say let’s celebrate
Columbo—not
Columbus—Day. I’ll dirty
my trench coat
for you. I could be a detective
the way I’ve perfected the stalk
without disturbing
anyone, especially the dead. I yell
at those people
who climb on the red metal
sculpture in a public garden.
It’s not a slide. I’m no grave
digger. Archaeologist—never. Who
gets to say what’s sacred or how
to achieve closure? It’s time to give
those bones a rest.
Twenty years into this
relocation west
of the Mississippi, I will
become the original
version of Another
Girl, Another Planet.
Just for today, no
cover. And maybe tonight.
And perhaps the next
full moon lighting
up the river’s only
natural falls.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 