Jana

by Richard Schiffman

When he called a month later,
I asked him how he was doing,
and he said, weeks of hell, weeks of hell.
And I nodded, though he couldn’t see me.
No doubt he nodded back (ruefully
I suppose) And that was that. 

I didn’t ask him about the slow-motion wasting
of the blood, those wretched weekly infusions,
the stone-cold clinics, the too-hushed hospice,
nor how she fared at the end
of their six plus decades together.
Neither about how grief sinks its talons
with such villainous precision.

I thanked him for the photo that he sent
of Jana in her prime, the ravishing,
as yet unravaged, designer of antique-style
wedding dresses, fashioned from old lace.
Dresses as sheer and fleeting as the spirit
when it leaves, trailing trains of chiffon,
whitely flowing rivers vanishing behind
new brides like the specter in a dream.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental reporter, poet and author of two biographies based in New York City. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn’t Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.