I am an okay writer & all, but I am not a poet.  Which I am cool with, as it leaves me open to love & enjoy poetry without beating myself up for not being, say, Sharon Olds, or Mary Oliver or Billy Collins or the writer of this poem -- Deborah Gordon Cooper.  

I once wrote a poem about a chicken being butchered, which was totally appropriate, as I completely butchered the English language & the entire form of poetry with my effort.

So this time, to my grieving sister, I offer somebody else's words & hope they give some comfort, or some understanding, or, at the very least, a sense that someone understands the Shitty Universal Experience of Death.  Which maybe isn't always shitty, maybe is sometimes lovely & spiritual & moving & enlightening.  I know this to be true because other people have written about it & all, but to me...so far...People-I-love-dying:  Shitty.

So I offer, with love, this Deborah Gordon Cooper poem, impressed that she is able to write of dying without once using the word "shitty," & hoping that it offers even the smallest comfort.

Visitations

 On Tuesday

in the produce aisle,

choosing my oranges by feel

and by their fragrance, 

I hear my father

whistling in my ear.

A Scottish lullaby.

Everything else stops.

There is a tenderness no border can contain.

A web that may be glimpsed

in certain, unexpected plays of light,

or felt

like a shawl

across one's shoulders

laid by unseen hands

There are sounds in other decibels

the heart can hear

when the wind is right

and the mind has quieted its clicking.

The border guards are sleeping

at their stations.

Spirits come and go.

The wall between the living and the dead

is as yielding as a membrane,

is as porous as a skin.

Lay your palm against it

and you can hear their voices

in your hand

and in the place where the chest opens

like a flower.

They are not far away,

no farther than the breath

and enter us as easily, 

in pine and peonies, 

in oranges and rain.

                                             -- Deborah Gordon Cooper