Memory
For Nancy Ungar, z”l
1950-2022
In order to remember, first
it was necessary to forget —
the way tall sycamores,
their day come round at last,
topple where spring soil
saturates with melted snow,
but this poem is not about
their slow rot, nor what comes
after — it is about the weight
of those great piebald trunks
roots no longer could support
and so,
released their grip on earth.
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Elegy
The night my uncle died,
it was morning
in Reykjavik and seagulls
circled above
the hot dog kiosk
across from my hotel
where I blinked awake,
not yet aware
an age had ended.
He was in the Navy.
They all served then,
my uncle, my father —
and they all knew why.
After the war
Grandma tucked away
my uncle’s sailor suit.
Years later,
it was still crisp.
In those times it was possible
to count on the fingers
of your hand and know
that five was five,
and that two fingers
spelled victory.
It remains possible —
I refuse
to say otherwise —
and kings do go naked,
and even when night
and fog creep in,
seabirds call us. Hot lava
pulses beneath our feet,
and one plus one
can still add up.
My uncle’s life
was never in vain.
________________________________________________________________________
MY FATHER’S YAHRZEIT
I.
He has been gone
over a quarter of a century —
and at least
he did not have to witness
the world again come unraveled.
II.
The way haze grips us
this summer, with clammy
fingers — How
can that cardinal perched
on my roofline— red
as a sunset when fires
on the west side of the continent
fill the sky with ash —
How does it keep on singing?
III.
This afternoon
I found a deer
asleep beneath the holly tree.
Neither of us knew
quite what to do. I stood
silent as the deer
untangled her lank limbs,
rose and shook herself.
I watched her as she
stared back, as she turned,
then slowly walked
into my neighbor’s yard.
IV.
Soon, the holly will bear
fruit, green berries
will swell, turn crimson,
Did that cardinal see me
as I looked up
from the red brick walkway?
You and I sit in rooms apart
and cannot know for certain
when we think of one another.
Far from here, fires
rage and ice
melts into a grey sea.
Still we go on
as if there was
a choice left in this.
V.
Long ago, I heard my father
sing a song of yearning —
“I wonder who’s kissing her now?”
— and I will never know
if he remembered I was there
in the back seat of our car,
where I heard and wondered
who he was thinking of.
________________________________________________________________________
Over
Everything is over.
Everything has ended.
The sky has ended.
The wind has ended.
The sea and the land have ended
and the day. The night.
These have ended also.
The hammer and the nail have ended.
The little boat and the big ship —
Ended. The rain, too, and the road
that winds by the banks of the ocean,
and the narrow path going up
through the forest into the hills.
And the hills have ended,
and the forest that covered them.
The long meadow of tallgrass, that,
too, has ended. Over. Done.
All our conversations have ended.
Our tears and our best jokes.
But the song the bird sings
while sitting on a branch
stretched over the abyss —
that has not ended, nor the glance
you gave in passing one morning
long ago when the sun was new.
These will never end.
These will go on forever.
W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, as well as several anthologies. Luther is the author of six poetry chapbooks — his most recent is The Colour Wars, (Kelsay Books, 2024). His full-length collection, Flying to America was released by Broadstone Books in 2024. Luther is the facilitator of a monthly virtual open mike sponsored by the Hyattstown Mill Arts Project in Hyattstown, Maryland. He also coordinates two monthly on-line poetry critique workshops. Luther is also a singer-songwriter who performs sporadically in wine-bars and cafes. He has released two singles and is in the process of recording an album of original material.