Leaving

Leaving our home, we reduce, divide, discard old treasures, toss out

simple remains of all these years, the everydays, the good days. I stop.

This life we lived here was sweet, I say. Our life was sweet.

Sijo

©Susan Zegarsky  

Normandie

reflecting pool

mirror still

white August clouds

white cross, white star

three old black geese soar

never having heard

war

Sijo

©Susan Zegarsky  

Windblown

We were poets, painters, always, in spite of coal dust, grease, laundry, our creations

of word and wood and needle all swept away; only I remain, against winds of grey autumns.

Poets, my family, lost, windblown, inconsequential as crumbled, dead leaves.

Sijo

©Susan Zegarsky  

Three Sijo

I

Dawn begins on my skin, sweet anticipation of light.

The earth turns, light proceeds; sun, a shiver of mourning.

Sorrow for the loss of peaceful night, my bones weigh heavy.

"Dawn always begins in the bones."  Hymn to Ra, The Egyptian Book of the Dead

II

We laugh over childhood adventures; our treasure was life, living  

freely, unconcerned with life, unaware of mortality;

remembering when, by his grave, we were immortals.

III

The hard weight of my thoughts dissolves, light shines clear after fresh rain;

each leaf and bud enunciates, each stone a gleam in high relief.

This day of despair washed clean, there comes my son walking home.

©Susan Zegarsky 

Three sijo poems, first published in Lynx XVIII: 1  February 2003

Thank you to the late Jane Reichhold, with my love and gratitude. 

Papa

He scatters seeds carefully, slow, broad hands gnarled, fingers stiff now.

He’s frail as the brittle snow-dusted leaves, the bright, tiny birds gathered at his feet.

Papa and I ready for winter in silence, its bitter frost no longer distant.

Sijo

©Susan Zegarsky  

Les jours noirs

Ces jours noirs, ces silences mortels, c’est à toi.  Le deuil de la poitrine,

le désespoir, la perte, la peur, tout n’était qu’à toi.  J’oublierai ce que tu m’as fait,

       de ne jamais oublier.

Enfin la souffrance se dissout comme la glace dans les petits bisous de pluie.

Sijo

©Susan Zegarsky  

Black Days

Those black days, the deathly silences, they are yours. The grief in my chest,

the despair, loss, fear, it was all just you.  I’ll forget what you’ve made of me, never to forget.

At last suffering dissolves like ice in the small kisses of rain.

Sijo

©Susan Zegarsky  

Coming soon.