After

My mother Madeline Donahue’s graduation picture

After

For this disease, no miracle cure exists;
it resists laying on hands, antidepressants, and sleeping pills.

This is not a migration, a pilgrimage,
some brief stop at a tourist trap,

a sip of champagne, a sigh after sex,
the moment before a bird flies out from pines,

the split-second water slides over river rock,
a quote from Bartlett’s to pepper an acceptance speech,

 her brief passage in a book.

 
No, this is, as in Anglo-Saxon, losian, to become lost, perish. She was a (n. singular) 1. She is the first entry of my dictionary, my you-can-do-anything you put-your-mind-to person. 2. She is not transitory, or transitive. I was the direct object of her affection. 3.Psychology. She has become a permanent inhabitant of my dreams, nudging me awake at all hours of the night, as if I could join her. 4. Electricity. She has become, is becoming stone-cold, blue as my lips when I refuse to leave the North Atlantic Ocean. 5. Insurance. Nonexistent. I assure you there is no protection from grief. 6. Latin. She is my root word, and there is no one with counsel on how to survive without her. 7. Military.  No, she cannot be called back like a lost dog, or a battalion with the wrong orders. I am at a loss. When can I call her for a simple lunch date, or 8. Greek myth. Our roles are reversed. I wander the Earth among all dead things of winter, crying her name.