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ON LEAVING EARLY

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for Adam

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To die young is to be spared everything

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                 beginning with your own father

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                 who does not spare you

                 the weight of his head laid down

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                 to test your pulseless chest

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and to die young is to be spared nothing,

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                to inherit none

                of the slower raptures:

                to sow no quickening

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                and never to wake

                your first or any love.

 

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LETTER TO RUSSELL

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The hand that cannot reach the phone

does not necessarily clutch the chest

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and chances are the late husband

is taking his time, still untaken by time.

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I know all this.

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I know that fever ripples kids’ dreams

and then they wake, no wake required;

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that the human norm is growing old

in a world reluctant to end.

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. . .

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Yet I tend to say goodbye to it all

before fear has even balled his hand

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to knock hard on the door. Let me

ask you this: is it catastrophizing

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if grief precedes alarm, if I land

at the imaginary end

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and stage my worries in reverse,

snapping loss unpunctually

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across the strophe’s knee? Let me ask:

is it magical thinking if I cannot spell out

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the everything

I would compel a willing God to spare?

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Jane Zwart teaches English at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have previously appeared in Poetry, TriQuarterly, and The Poetry Review, as well as other journals and magazines.

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