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      April 7, 2025Nancy BeagleSecond Time Going

      My father died on the June morning
      of my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary,
      and the next year, grief caught me by the throat,
      silenced all words but no.
       
      It was my mother’s death in winter, though,
      that ushered my undoing. Snow fell most days,
      and we were boxed in. When it didn’t, the roads
      were slick with ice. The cardinals still came
       
      to the pear tree, their red a welcomed brightness
      against the white. But one day a storm so strong
      attacked our Vermont woods that the tree was torn
      apart as if severed by lightning.
       
      Branches lay scattered on the ground or dangled
      like limp limbs begging amputation. My husband
      cut it back to almost nothing, and the cardinals
      disappeared. The icicles hung heavy
       
      on the house eaves, eager to pierce
      the inadvertent passerby, and thundered
      to the ground with the arrival of any warmth.
      The breach of her death, a crack in the river ice,
       
      did not mend. Rather it sprouted new veins,
      like a car windshield when hit by a rock.
      The silence after her last breath hovered
      over the house. Time did not cushion
       
      grief. Still, her clothes hang in the closet,
      her jewelry nestles inside their velvet boxes,
      her paints lie untouched on her easel,
      paintings unfinished propped against walls.
       
      I walk into her room, open the windows
      now that winter has eased, to let her spirit move freely.
      I sit on her bed, talk to her, as I did that last time
      when she quietly just left. And the birds
       
      still sing.
       

      Nancy Beagle

      “I write poetry to stave off melancholy. I have no choice but to write. Poems wake me up at night, accompany me through the days. It is a channeling for which I feel blessed.”