Here to Tell You

—A memorial cento with lines from Lynda Hull, Jane Kenyon, Claudia Emerson, C.D. Wright, Lucia Perillo, and Linda Gregg 

Dusk is eager and comes early. 
The fact of death starts pearling large in the mind. 
I was young for a minute then I got old, 
living in each particular moment of the day. 
Oh I was once in such a hurry. I was a fist 
closed around a rock. We never understood 
the life we lived, nor the one now. 
In this extreme state of light everything seems flawed: 
what if I had loved myself more? 
There are enough signs of the lack of tenderness in the world. 
I confess that last house was the coldest I kept— 
there were so many black birds I could not count; 
I was again alone in my bed. 
And yet. And yet. I am here to tell you 
I did not mind. Existence was more valuable than that. 
There’s just no accounting for happiness— 
each fugitive moment the heaven we choose to make. 
I give everything away and it goes away. 
Ah, my friends, I could tell you my troubles 
but is that why you came? 
Get your bearings. Hear the trees. The grass  
resolves to grow again, receiving rain to that end. 
No more paddling the murk of pointless speculation 
when the aim is to feel wholeness itself. 
Each day I learn more of the miraculous: 
the soul is a place and love must find its way there. 
Who’s walking tonight? Who’s hungry? 
We must all escape our carapace. Come shining. 
I am a thread in the deep eye of a needle; 
it might have been otherwise. I’m falling upward, 
nothing to hold me down. Bodies, light, 
sap, our language: this is the final thing. 

ANNE MYLES

Anne Myles is the author of What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (2022). Her poems have appeared in On the Seawall, North American Review, Whale Road Review, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Learn more at annemyles.com.