2 June 2002 | Vol. 2, No. 2
Missing
We're still waiting,
less radiant, less sure.
It grows dark. We light candles.
Cousins, strange in serious suits,
fold their hands on their laps
and sing old, familiar songs.
Sleep
Sleep
the grass is growing
and a single bird tests the air
reminding us today is all there is.
Sleep
Sleep
The grass is growing
and the well's not deep enough
to drown the moon.
Light condenses
Doors swing open
but the guest is
not yet visible.
The dream still in our mouths,
we drift to a room where the thin
gruel of early morning light
falls on a scarred tabletop
and a white plate
with its burden of black bread.
Now we keep very still
and wait for the missing one
to come again and share
this heavy loaf of silence.
About the author:
Ruth Daigon was the founder and editor of Poets On: for twenty years until it ceased publication. Her awards include The Eve of St. Agnes Award, The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and The Greensboro Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in such print and online journals as Shenandoah, Negative Capability, Poet & Critic, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Ariga, Crania, CrossConnect, Zuzu's Petals, and many others. She has been Poet-of-the-Month on The University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus for a chapbook in both English and Spanish. Another of her chapbooks permanently resides on the Internet at Web Del Sol. She has read from her work Payday at the Triangle, based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of New York City in 1911, on location in the Lower East Side Tenement Museum of Manhattan. Her latest poetry collection, Handfuls of Time, will appear in 2002. She can be reached by email at ruthart@aol.com or online at members.aol.com/ruthart/.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Ruth Daigon at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 2, No. 2, where "Missing" ran on June 2, 2002. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
