Two Years On: A Poem - WhoWhatWhy Two Years On: A Poem - WhoWhatWhy

Fragile, Wassily Kandinsky, 1931
‘Fragile,’ cardboard, tempera, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1931. Photo credit: Wassily Kandinsky / WikiArt (PD)

Fleeting images, wistful feelings

Missing the jolt of love

learning to live without

 

Facing an end to joy

holding fast to what’s left

 

First warm sun of spring,

the cherries’ (“loveliest of trees”)

incandescent bloom, baby-skin touch

of magnolia petal, Love’s Labor’s Lost

in the Delacorte’s open air,

Pavarotti and Freni crushing

La Bohème at the Met,

lush light of late summer dusk,

tart-sweet crunch of new-crop

macs, black-and-white hush

of all-night snow, the afterglow

of your gone smile

 

When the past slips its leash

why keep rehearsing loss?

 

Because to let it go

is to lose you twice. 

  • Gerald Jonas is a senior editor at WhoWhatWhy and a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as other journals large and small.

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