She held him, not trusting him to find the chair.
“We’re family,” she said. “Like family.
You don’t remember?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve come to our house for thirty years.”
He shrugged sorry.
“I have to go with him.”
He knew him, but not his name.
And later, after the coffee, he went.
For when he was young he could go where he liked.
But now was time for where he’d rather not go.
R.I.P. Fr. Piet van der Pol S.S.S. (D. 19 February 2017).
When you have children your heart
leaves the safety of the rib cage.
The bones open up and the thing is out there
exposed
to torrents of bruises and dyes.
Grief and drugs
sit at the table.
I’ve never had a lover
as pretty as you.
Might I, if no one minds, crawl from the
rubble of this world
to speak of what you’ve done?
To note the earth below the collapse
and the sky above it, light piercing
the gloom and colors born of its shafts,
and greet the other rubble people rising,
shaking dust from their shirt,
weeping, believing
and starting again?
Leida Engelaar-Evers
Born December 30, 1926. Died December 1, 2016. God bless you and keep you!
Detail from triptych by Carla Veltman.
You were in your last days
and you’d open your eyes
and say you were tired.
We said, Sleep, and
We’re going for a walk.
I didn’t like that it was wet in the woods,
but there were acorns,
and that, she said, was what you did together –
make dolls of them, and sew.
Once she made pants. When she
thought she was, she said, I’m done,
but you said no.
You pulled stitches and fixed the seam.
You wouldn’t stop till you got it right.
Which is what you’re doing now, she said:
piecing the past and pulling tight the seam.
