Jordan Trethewey 

Jordan Trethewey is the current poet laureate for the City of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, where he lives with his wife, son, and daughter. His writing appears in numerous journals, is translated in Vietnamese, Farsi, and French… and appears in a lunar capsule on the Moon. He is also an editor at Open Arts Forum. Jordan’s recent books, Spirits for Sale and Unexpected Mergers,  are collaborations with Dutch artist Marcel Herms, and are available through Amazon. https://jordantretheweywriter.wordpress.com/

Like Feathers, Weightless

But death must come to them differently,
so close to the beginning.
As though they had always been
blind and weightless.
     -Louise Gluck, The Drowned Children

We are here for short time, but
twice as long as 19th Century death.
To worry about reaching 80 must
seem indulgent to child ghosts, come
bearing witness to
what might have happened to them
if endings were written differently.
Do they desire what they didn’t know, so
quickly plucked from family, close
to their hearts? Perhaps they hover to
warm with eternal energies, the
closest activity to touch. As in the beginning.
We are left standing, as
if ready to follow, numb, though
clutching soft souvenirs they
once held. Wore. If only we had
been there at the right moment! Always
repeated when weather’s been
similar. We wish to be blind,
others’ offspring invisible. And
blown away like feathers, weightless.