Written while visualizing Elihu Vedder’s Memory and listening to Nick Cave’s Ghosteen
I
White satin ribbon
blush pink roses unopened
grace her winding sheet–
another athlete
dying young-blush pink roses
unopened- no wreath-
blush pink roses underneath
White organza veil,
Beauty attends her journey.
Hourglass empty
blush pink roses unopened
purify days past
what we love can never last
blush pink roses unopened
gray ashes unfurled
wind lifts ashes skyward
wild sea claims what cannot soar
blush pink roses scattered.
II
White foam carried you away–
you, blush pink roses,
white satin ribbon ashes
into the high tide
beauty and sadness entwined–
gray, indistinguishable
this is grief, the eternal
leaving and return–
all memories pull, recede
pull, recede, manic
waves and tides, arrhythmias
monsters in undertow
stumble through seaweed
sand and seawater
pull us deeper down each day.
We are so lost– no map
can lead us back, no elapse
in time-reversed or erased
can make us who we
used to be—distance rewards
nothing. Still, you rise
above the ocean, golden,
blank, diaphanous
against blue-gray evening sky
against grey blue dawn–
all time becomes a mourning
ritual, becomes
one moment, in this, our lives
in this, our Eden
gone.
Alexandra Wright was born in Atlanta, GA, but has spent most of her life in Southern California—first, in and near Huntington Beach, and most recently, in the Inland Empire. She writes in the genres of Poetry and Creative Non-Fiction. Her work has most recently appeared in Issue 17 of The Pomona Valley Review. Her work will also appear in the upcoming anthology, Writing From Inlandia, which will feature work crafted in 2022. She is working on a memoir about her experiences as the adoptive mother of an at-risk child from the San Bernardino County foster-care system.