Remembering Jane Kenyon, 1947-1995
by Michael Escoubas

When I think of you, you become sunlight
breaking through clouds.

You become a chorus of bluebells
singing in morning mist on a forest floor …

when leukemia laid claim to you, took you
home, with so many poems left undone,

I missed the crush of your foot on ripe pears,
Donald Hall’s shirttail, which you wanted to be,

next to his skin, as it were. Now, clouds linger
longer than they used to, forest bluebells count

one less girl kicking her dress over her knees.
Life might have been Otherwise, but you would be

the first to say, that you lived to make the world
a better place, than it would have been Otherwise.


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