"I traced the sunken letters of her name"
Photo by Anna-Louise: Pexels.com
We brought her chrysanthemums. On Sunday mornings
I filled a tin bucket from the loose steel spigot,
carried it down pebbled paths,
watered flowers at the stone.
Trying not to get grime on my white church gloves,
I traced the sunken letters of her name—my name—
in grey granite.
We stood at the close-cropped mound,
heads low, hands folded. The river below
bent in a slow arc. I wanted the silence
to end, wanted her to know I was there.
I made a window in the grass
to see the white lace, what she held in her hands.
Kathleen Goldblatt’s first chapbook, Our Ghosts Wait Patiently, has recently been released by Finishing Line Press. Her work also appears in The Comstock Review, Amethyst, The Healing Muse, Psychological Perspectives, The Literary Nest and five editions of the Wickford Rhode Island Poetry and Art Book. Kathleen is a writer and a Jungian psychoanalyst. Inspired by the symbolic world, after a career in social work, she earned her Diplomate in Analytical Psychology. Drawn to the sea, she’s lucky to live in Newport, RI. Kathleen reflects on poetry and the imaginal world during long walks with her dog, Archie, who never tires of listening.