Jason Shinder: "Coda"

And now I know what most deeply connects us

after that summer so many years ago,
and it isn’t poetry, although it is poetry,

and it isn’t illness, although we have that in common,

and it isn’t gratitude for every moment,
even the terrifying ones, even the physical pain,

though we are halfway through
it, or even the way you describe the magnificence

of being alive, catching a glimpse,

in the store window, of your blowing hair and chapped lips,
though it is beautiful, it is; but it is

that you’re my friend out here on the far reaches

of what humans can find out about each other.


 
"Coda" by Jason Shinder. Published in American Poetry Review (November/December, 2008). © Jason Shinder.

This poem was written during the illness that claimed the poet's life in April 2008.

Art credit: "Wind," photograph by AislingImages (originally black and white).

Jason Shinder: "Alone for the Fifth Day"

When I look at the ocean for a long time, the blue

and restless driven waves, I keep looking, I keep looking,
I keep looking at the waves swaying in the wind

like a metronome, wired for the sound of a sleeping heart,

and I keep looking with the silence of the sun
on the windowpane, and I keep looking and do not stop

looking deeper into waves as if into the middle

of a woman's body, where the soul and spirit
have no human bonds, and I begin never to turn away

from looking though I am frightened but keep looking

beyond what I know until I can hardly think or breathe
because I have arrived, with the need to be me disappearing

into the beautiful waves, reflecting no one, nothing, no one.

"Alone for the Fifth Day" by Jason Shinder, from Stupid Hope. © Graywolf Press, 2009.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).