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Valerie Bacharach's avatar

Emily, I love this. Kimiko Hahn is one of my favorite poets. I started writing and here is what I came up with:

January 21, Sun Valley, a visit with my brother in law, the sun not yet visible,

a bit of light from snow.

Barbara’s photo popped up on my phone,

she and I holding our first poetry books, she is beautiful,

healthy. In March she will be dead four years (future tense for the past, as if time-travel)

and an article says the earth’s magnetic north pole is shifting from Canada to Siberia

as if I’m not unsteady enough with my grief-memories,

unsure how to articulate. Forrest Gander writes “if upswelling

verb tenses could draw together past and present

into an emotional harmonic”

but harmony is an impossible task these days, eluding

my grasping hands, my desperate heart.

The only constant my ghosts who tiptoe around my thoughts like giggling children,

waiting to catch me unaware.

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