Begin Your Acts of Life Again

Air that room your father

Built for your siblings before his one

Child left for God before everyone else,

Dye your hair silver and

Enter the last quarter of your life

Floating, dancing, digging

Golden soils and

Humming poor old Country Roads

In your uncle’s backyard

Just before it rains stones of frost,

Keep mending that boat till you see

Life in its toddler engravings your friends

Mocked every time they visited after college with their

New stuff, new slangs, new jobs, new friends,

Out goes your fisted laugh in bed with a

Perfect kick inside the cozy

Quilt with red flowers and hideous pears

Retrieved from your greedy niece and her

Slouchy husband snoring his little life away,

Touch that mousy nose of your boy

Upped in good humor or

Vexation in that photograph you took last century,

Where did you put your dreadful

X-rays, declaring you’re not fit for

Your own life? Forget. Go.

Zip up all evidence of grief today.

Note: this was the first time I tried writing an abecedarian poem, and I’m now convinced that the hard hand of order can be liberating and beautiful.