First Anniversary Prayers

by Carolyn Cushing

Dear Departed One,

The evening 

became evening

became dark,

led you to Nowhere.

I knelt at that threshold

whispering all the words

I knew into Winter,

night after long night

down on my knees.

I couldn’t leave.

But Spring came and ice broke.

I mixed your ash in with the seeds,

answered soil’s call to be fed.

Prayers now in my palms,

under my nails, turning the earth.

I watched green take the field,

raise the vine, feed the bud

and blood of strawberry

opened my lips.

I walked then 

in our old places

as green turned to flame,

turned to brown,

everything fell down 

and this is the day 

you’ve been gone 

in all the seasons.

I’ve used up my prayers

A white goose rises

so close I hear air lift each feather,

the sound of earth embracing sky,

turning me into the shift

where I no longer speak

but instead listen to hear 

from the wind

from the field 

from the snow

the prayer 

you make now 

for me.

* * * * *

Carolyn Cushing is a poet inspired by nature, slightly obsessed with cells, and currently focused on the places where life and death meet. She has been a finalist for the Philbrick Poetry Award of the Providence Athenaeum (2012) and the Tarantula Poetry Contest of Pilgrimage Journal (2018). Her poetry and prose can be found at soulpathsanctuary.com.