Lynn Gilbert
Benefactor
Along back roads I spot a riddle:
random clumps of jonquils—
gold exploding on green hills
and un-mown banks
far from any house. Whoever
you may be or were
who planted Spring here,
you have my thanks.
The Puzzle
In the daytime-curtained gloom of the family’s church—
mesmerizing the old man's gathered mourners—
only one object is absolutely still:
corpse in its death boat.
Nose, familiar, sharpened by wasting illness.
Glasses aiding eyes that are firmly shuttered.
Suit and tie as if for the Sunday service,
though this is Tuesday.
Friends and age-peers crowd to the safer back pews;
empty front pews wait for his spouse and family.
Dazed, the wife is led by her elder daughter
past the great puzzle:
When or how did spirit defect from body?
Do we die by gradual loss of being?
Why should his personality seem to hover
near the survivors?
His bywords, punch lines, gestures, and intonation
still surround us; after some years they too will
fade like his freckled hands, from which the live
color has vanished.
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| AUTHOR BIO |
| Lynn Gilbert has had poems in Blue Unicorn, Concho River Review, Exquisite Corpse, Gnu, The Huron River Review, Kansas Quarterly, Light, Mortar, Peninsula Poets, and Southwestern American Literature among others. She was a founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and a finalist in the Gerald Cable Book Award, 2021. She helps edit poetry for the journal Third Wednesday. |
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| POETRY CONTRIBUTORS |
 Hilary Biehl
Michelle DeRose
Claudia Gary
Lynn Gilbert
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
Mia Schilling Grogan
Sara Henning
Jenna Le
Marjorie Maddox
Susan McLean
Samantha Pious
Donna Vorreyer
Gail White
Marly Youmans
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