Fragile Is

when I see you shuffling along the sidewalk 
with red-rimmed eyes, and your lost look 
at the patio concrete when you drop your fork 

and I don’t know if you want me to pick it up for you;
when the sky suddenly shifts from sunny blue 
to the raging palm fronds lashing against the gray;

to trickle, to drizzle, 
to torrential; the house of yourself
crumbling into someone else’s arms 

like the farmer casting his dead cow 
on the fallow field 
because she has outlived her usefulness. 

Fragile is a day you won’t know my name
a day you’ll say I hurt 
in a language that turns to gibberish 

on your tremoring tongue. And I’ll remember 
the fragile day you held the rope 
as I dangled on the chinks of a high cliff 

how it was a day of names: wildflower, lichen, basalt; 
a day of blisters and philosophical questions, the why of everything
hanging above us, a cloud darkening at the peak. 

D. DINA FRIEDMAN

Published in many literary journals and nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, D. Dina Friedman is the author of two YA novels, Escaping into the Night and Playing Dad’s Song, one short-story collection, Immigrants, and two poetry collections, Wolf in the Suitcase and Here in Sanctuary, Whirling. http://www.ddinafriedman.com.