Two Poems by Liane Tyrrel
/Walking with Grief
There is a thing about walking with grief.
It’s not just me. I read about it in a novel. They lose their son.
They work and work and can never be free. Then they walk.
I have to believe that what I meant, I said, and not go back
and look again. For instance, will we ever reach one another?
My life is punctuated by walking and not walking. I am aware
of all of the ways this planet is moving. If I list them here for you,
you might join me in this endless churning. I used to say at parties
or in hushed tones with select people, I don’t like magicians or outer space.
Magicians because you can’t trust them. But I’m open to another opinion.
Tell me some magicians believe. I love space now. It makes me think
of the thing people say about love and hate being close. It happened
sometime in my 40s. I can’t walk there like I did when my long marriage
ended or when my daughter was far away but I could still see her
so I kept walking. I feel funny using the word cosmos, but that might change.
I used to never say divine or even soul. I know it’s the same thing. Us,
the color the sky makes, the incessant knocking of woodpeckers and sapsuckers
out my window. Reading about black matter and the gods.
When I’m walking my dog now I catch things from the corner of my eye,
see movement in the brush or even a plastic bag waving. I hear
birch trees making a different sort of creak like a human child
or the young of another animal. It doesn’t matter that I’m alone,
something swells up inside. It moves from my stomach,
a mixture of grief and love. Right there it extends from every point
inside to the prickling of my scalp in all directions, including the sky,
and whatever else is beyond that.
Homecoming
You walk out to the driveway with a wrench in your hand turning it absentmindedly
between your thumb and forefinger, nails long and dirty for playing the guitar,
from building houses, because you like it that way.
From my position looking out and then in the kitchen where I peel potatoes
I look calm as you pass by the window on your way to the barn.
I came home last night after a week. The house smells, the refrigerator smell
overtakes me every time I open the door. There’s an old bean pot in thick liquid
I tell you is rotten but you insist you’ll eat on Monday.
Last night I dreamed she was there in a disembodied way, was not she
but the place in me I tend like rotting fruit in an orchard. You were there
and you were in your body but it was hollow and I could not touch it.
You stole some soft down from my bed already threadbare and transparent
to add to her bed. You showed her the way to the shower, twisting the dampened
knob, tenderly adjusting the temperature. How could you not?
It almost moves me now to imagine the way you walk so softly down the dim hallway,
the way you pull back the shower curtain, resting one hand on the cool porcelain
and lifting your other hand to the water to get it just right.
Liane Tyrrel is a visual artist and poet. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Guesthouse Lit, Small Orange and Volume Poetry, among others. Her prose poem “Spontaneous Combustion” was nominated for Best Short Fictions 2021 and her poem “Always Happening” was nominated for Best of the Net 2022. She walks with her dog in the woods and fields of New Hampshire where she lives. https://www.lianetyrrel.com/
