by Amy Fleury
Into the circle of chairs at the coffee shop
or church basement the newly bereft,
bedraggled and numb, are hauled ashore
by those long ago wrecked, those who know
the ropes, handing out Styrofoam cups
to be bitten and clutched. The coffee
isn’t bad for such a sad, uncharted place.
Salt water inundates us, so we pass around
the tissue box like a conch shell. All loss
is ours, we who are stranded together,
each with our own stormy story to share.
What unlikely castaways we make—professor,
pipefitter, nurse, veteran, and even undertaker.
Fiddling with the transistor, we try to dial
back the staticky voices of our gone ones.
We talk of the mirage of what might have been
and what it had been like living on dry land.
We know no raft can be fashioned to save us.
No flare or driftwood S.O.S. will bring rescue.
We must accept there’s no getting off this island.
At evening’s end we part, feeling the way down
torchlit paths to our own makeshift shelters.
But we’ll return to the circle to stare into the fire,
comforted by a tribe where our sorrow is known.
We embrace each other and are embraced,
saying, “you cannot bear it, but you will.”
Amy Fleury is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Beautiful Trouble and Sympathetic Magic, both from the Crab Orchard Series of Southern Illinois University Press, and a chapbook, Reliquaries of the Lesser Saints (RopeWalk Press). Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming from The Penn Review, 32 Poems, Image, swamp pink, and other journals. She lives and teaches in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Hawaii Pacific Review 