SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
for Chris
I wanted to save something beautiful for you.
The last three jewels of glistening pomegranate
balanced in the palm of my hand before I ate them.
The morning birdsong in the lemon tree after you left for work,
the memory of last night’s rain still written on the lawn.
Or earlier, the haunting roundness of the moon
over the canyon just before dawn when I couldn’t sleep,
standing at the window, looking back at you, your body
floating in the watery moonlight of our sheets.
I mean something really beautiful, my love.
The stillness in the house after the washing machine
ceased to hum. The last line from a slender book of poems,
a hardback from the library barely worn, repeated aloud for you,
its bitter sweetness still lingering on my tongue.
Or the way the baby slept so deeply while I read,
burying himself in the secret scent of his favorite blanket.
One arm thrown across that woolen teddy my mother gave us
in those final weeks of waiting before his birth.
The other hand open wide, fingers outstretched in a dancer’s
graceful, expectant pose. I wanted to save all of this for you.
But I couldn’t. It didn’t last. It never does.
That brief moment of grace when the ordinary shines so exquisitely.
At the end of the day you will return to us, as you always do,
and we will both be tired, empty, distracted, spent.
Everything more chaotic, more fragile, than when you left.
—from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems
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Emily Montgomery died of cancer December 3rd, 2012, at the age of 34. She is deeply missed by her husband Chris Wakeham; her son, Miles; her daughter, Eloise, born eleven weeks early due to Emily’s illness; her mother; and her many, many friends. A romantic at heart, Emily captured the fleeting beauty and poignancy of daily life in her poetry.
