Oh, Who'd Leave This World

Nancy Nielsen died May 23, 2016 after a long period of declining health.  I had the great privilege of caring for her – my life partner, colleague and dear, dear friend – through her final years, and of being with her when she passed.  She wrote this poem on April 8, after one of many temporary recoveries from a succession of setbacks.  Somehow, we both knew it would be her last.

Nancy left behind a number of unpublished poems, some of which I will post to this blog from time to time, along with my own as they occur.  For those interested, here is her obituary .

– Alan Brooks

Oh, Who’d Leave This World

When the wind

                       that wind

wind from the sea

                       salt and wrack

lifting the meadow grass

ghosting with fog

or where

racket of crows

                       caw and caw

dipping

                       into the wind

Who’d set aside the book

                       this book any book

so filled with life

                       book on the table

Side by side

                        we talk of the stories

wind from the south

The wind outside

                       salt marsh wind

                       wind from the sea

who?

5:30 a.m. \ On The Other Side

Nancy: A dream, and slow rising light, and past and present and unexpected future, and out of that this day, this reality.

5:30 a.m.

bitter greens and fried pies

paw paws and fish sputtering

misty lake iron pan

Granny, Aunt Nannie, Papa

dawns noons twilight

and this is dawn

another dawn

I think of food

I think of being fed

how food is memory

how food is love

I'm still alive, I say

surprised

I'm still alive

shall we have tea?

Alan: When National Public Radio revived the old “This I Believe” program, among the short statements of faith was one that struck me as unarguably sensible: “I believe in biology.” 

On The Other Side

When it seemed clear you were dying

we could only live in the moment –

in and for it.

Death, which had always been invisibly with us,

became manifest now in the chairs,

the table, the rug: all the furnishings of our room.

We opened the door called “hope” and stepped through,

closing it gently behind us.

We saw we were in the same room as before.

The door had locked.  We could not go back.

So we took up our lives again,

moment by moment, as many moments as there might be –

there, here, there –

hope a door we could no longer open,

no longer had need for.