Reading poems about the dead – skimming in the wake of supreme decisions about potency and evil

Poetry
Written By Suzanne Swanson
 

Who has a whole life left


to set this straight? And, the ones 
that do, why 
should I leave them 
this work? 
     Impossible 


that I will not continue forever 
to lean into the wheel alongside.  Today I revise


my directives.  I choose:  immerse me in water 


and lye, may I be less a burden 
for this burdened 
blue dot.  Dear ones, receive 
my bones, still hard
but ground.  Do not carry them 


to my beloved
river, lest they harm the silver 
bass, the solemn 
snails, the plants waving 
the water, the water reflecting
you, the water 


all of you still must drink.  

Suzanne Swanson

Suzanne Swanson is the author of House of Music and the chapbook What Other Worlds: Postpartum Poems. She is a winner of the Loft Mentor Series; she helped to found Laurel Poetry Collective. Recent poems have appeared in Terrain, The Hopper, Salamander, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Texas Borderlands Poetry Review, and in the Land Stewardship Letter. She rows on the Mississippi River and is happiest near big water. 

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