Thursday 22 August 2019


For Anya

by Nancy Gerber


Her name, Anya Krugovoy Silver, lined
in black in the Times obituary.
And I was jealous.

Not of her death but being so loved, the runes
of a life freed from time in the eternal
archive of history, where the past is forever fused
to the present.

She died young, Anya
age 49, her battle with breast cancer
irradiating her flesh.
She wrote through the sickness
clinging to hope and beauty,
her poems a raft in the depths of despair.

Her physical form now gone but the poems
remain, lines like veins blooming with blue life --
Dance until your body forgets
what it wants . . .
From darkening days, the light will surge and flee.

Like ghosts the words of her longing burn
inside my eyes.


* * * * *

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships, and is available on Amazon.

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