Disbelief

I have all of these
lily plants but not you,
nor peace.

How they ease
my breathing yet
trouble my mind,
symbols
of your soaring
too high to see
or reach,
beauty clanging
like bells
out of tune, time’s
up.         Leaves

so shiny & perfect
they look fake,
but a few brown ones
barely clinging &
curled in on themselves—
less supple, less everything
like me, let me know
they are real.

They are real. Too
real. Lord knows
you were the most real
one can ever be & now
you are really gone!

Your need is over,
but your giving goes on
& on.     Heaven is shedding
desire’s heavy robes, pure
devotion to love’s
bare essence.    You, flowered
& shiny in what’s left
of my heart, teaching me
to rally. No matter
how it may appear,
I’m not rootless.

Today & tomorrow
& the day after that,
you remain evergreen
& ours
somewhere not here,
as my tears land
in potted soil exiled
from its mother, Earth,
like me.

Copyright © 2021 by Kamilah Aisha Moon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 2, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“A week after my mother’s funeral, I sat in my house surrounded yet alone—suddenly hapless, heart stuttering. As I struggled to scale this overwhelming new reality, writing about the ritual of loved ones sending plants to tend in the wake of transition became a thin yet sturdy rope I held tightly in that moment.”
—Kamilah Aisha Moon