A Very Mary Variation
A Golden Shovel poem using a line from Mary Oliver’s “The World I Live In” – “only if there are angels in your head will you ever possibly see one”
Regret
only one child matters
if death is imminent and
there is no other voice allowed?
are you honoring her others?
angels appear as demons and vice-versa
in the surreal fog of illness, and
your chosen one is no angel whose
head is not thinking with heart, who
will not allow a taste of sugar or drugged slumber;
you perpetuate her suffering – have you
ever stopped and considered that quite
possibly her hell is not about your getting to
see fleeting glimpses of her former self from a cage of
misery?
one cancerous regret can later overtake
Common Threads 