He remembers your feet,
bare, slightly arched as you reached
to put the colander on the high shelf,
slipshod dancing to the CBC. Your wrists
slight as a plover’s neck, your neck
slight as the wind in the poplar on the lawn.
You emptied yourself of the dark
until you became the light.
Nothing is left behind
except your body and the kick-desperate,
marigold cemetery — that gold denial
of what you, in your quicklime canopy,
convey to him, even in your absence.
Joanne Merriam is a Canadian living in Concord, NH. Her poetry has appeared in dozens of journals including The Fiddlehead, Stand Magazine and My Poem Rocks. You can find her online at http://www.joannemerriam.com.
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17 Responses to “THE GRAVE MARKER • by Joanne Merriam”
Comments
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April 9th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Poem of remembrance of someone very much disrepected by “He,” which, according to the poem” is caused by the someone having left “nothing behind” except the “quicklime canopy” (the grave).” A description of the terrible in memorium, but a basically good poem. I think it could have been improved by emphasizing the rhythms of scorn. This could be done with some changes in line length, altering the rhythm to evoke more feeling of the scornful attitude without changing a word.
April 9th, 2009 at 4:32 am
To me this reads as a very resonant and accomplished portrait of grief. I think that in the poem ‘he’ remembers her body not just in the rather beautiful image:
“Your wrists/
slight as a plover’s neck”
But also in the mundane:
“bare, slightly arched as you reached
to put the colander on the high shelf,”
Despite the fact that he knows she, and her living, moving body is gone (the flowering marigolds live on and tell him – marking her grave.) except what is left in her grave… he has to be reminded by the marogolds because he remebers her body so well – all the time she moving around in his familiar world….that’s what it seemed to say to me, anyway.
Spot on…and very, very good.
April 9th, 2009 at 6:33 am
“Nothing is left behind” felt more like grief than disrespect to me, as did the recollections of common every-day memories (slipshod dancing, reaching for a colander). These are the things a grieving person recalls. “You emptied yourself of the dark
until you became the light.” That was just beautiful! Nicely done!
April 9th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Haunting. Nice work.
April 9th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Some wonderful imagery here, as Kirsty already pointed out.
April 9th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Kirsty- Second paragraph: “Nothing is left behind except your body” – the body remained; and the “kick-desparate, marrygold cemetery” – even the cemetary wants to kick the body away. Slipshod means sloppy workmanship, carelessness.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:24 am
“You emptied yourself of the dark/until you became the light.” My favorite line of this beautiful, evocative poem. I’m almost grieving right along with the bereaved husband.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Roberta, we don’t have to agree, and if we see different things then, to me, that means the poem is richer.
I think kick-desperate is a great phrase, one that makes you feel round it for a meaning, given that it has been created for this poem to capture something that is hard to sum up just by using the word ‘desperate’. To me it is trying to highlight the desperation as urgent, almost violent-(kicking). The type of desperation grief makes you feel.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Kirsty, I agree differences must be respected. But my own opinion is that any art is made effective by the artist by precision, although the work may me difficult to interpret or to understand. INTENTIONAL vagueness is an attempt at artsy false poesy. Though I am clear about what I think “kick desperate” means, I may be wrong. You admire the word “kick” for its violence, but it seems to me to refer to the cemetery, not the bereaved. “Slipshod”, “slight”, “slight”, “quicklime” (a whitewash), “kick”, – these words are hardly an expression of a grieved memorial in a short elegy of few other words. I like the poem for it’s attempt to express recognition of the momentousness of the goneness of someone who, although not respected yet creates a gap still recognized as loss.
April 9th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Roberta, your reading of the poem is interesting, thanks. Who knows what the author specifically intended…in the end it doesn’t really matter, (I think.) But the fact it has more than one reading must be a good thing.
April 9th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
[...] today, two publications: “The Grave Marker” at Every Day Poets and “Cicadas” in the new print journal 42 Magazine. [...]
April 9th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Hmm…maybe the poet will chime in and give us her take on the poem. I agree, that in a way, it doesn’t really matter, but it’s always interesting to hear what was “meant” Until then, I too liked — “You emptied yourself of the dark until you became the light.”
April 10th, 2009 at 4:37 am
It was meant to be grief rather than scorn, but Roberta’s interpretation makes perfect sense from the text and is equally valid. I think once a poem is out there, authorial intent is somewhat irrelevant. I loved reading everybody’s take on it – thanks!
April 10th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Amy and Joanne – To me, authorial intention always matters and is always important, never irrelevant. Thank you Joanne, for answering. I thought several times about the line “You emptied yourself of the dark until you became the light” and thought it might mean something racial, that the deceased had cut herself off from “dark” friends, becoming insular. Being very unsure of its meaning I let that go with an unwritten question mark. Joanne, what does it mean?
April 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I thought it a brilliant portrait of grief. I loved the language and want to reread it.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I was thinking of “the light” as death/afterlife. The person I had in mind while writing this is a very religious person who strives to purify herself of bad impulses (“the dark”). I wasn’t thinking of race at all, though that’s an interesting take on it.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
A very evocative, very delicate portrait of grief. I think it’s truly lovely.
I also think that your use of the phrase “kick-desperate” was brilliant; it reminds me of Lowell’s “fireword” (both the name of his poem and a word used within that poem.
I enjoyed this immensely!