“Transcending Pain”
Wendy Balconi
Collage
(sign outside a small church in County Mayo)
It would be his last enjoyment,
although now dead, still a bit odd.
We took his ashes straight from mass.
First, to the pub where it began.
As night settled on the churchyard,
we leapt the wall, pushed through the yews.
His body urned in light tin
he’d chosen, paid with debit card
as empty as the chapel’s pews.
He’d given all to romantic
love and drink. She believed only
in the first. Both married. But that
had long given in. His respect
for marriage was legendary–
mostly in the breach. Tit for tat
and the pair’s talk soon led to bed.
Some years of not-so-secret trysts.
She died first. Her husband went next.
Laid side-by-side, stone at head.
A couple never known to kiss,
much less dabble in lust or sex.
That was where our dear friend came in.
And that night we came to bring him
to be on top as she last asked.
We didn’t so much bury him
as say a prayer, hum a hymn,
and turn over a clump of grass.
A wisp of his gray dust puffed up
and mixed with moonlight and gray mist.
Most joined her in the Holy Sod,
where the pair are, at last, blessed
by (we hope) a forgiving God.
He was just an infant, when
I, holding him with one arm,
rocked while reading Beowulf.
Mostly grisly Grendel parts—
those murders in the mead hall
up through that damn dragon tale
that ended it all. I have
no idea what he took
in, preverbal after all.
But in night’s cave, he gave up
to sleep as if traveling
underwater to battle,
breathing slow, perhaps aware
that somewhere, so very near,
lay the wronged Mother’s lair
and the mysterious sword
that dissolves when not needed,
like the difference between
first life and mid-age. I thought
I, at last, understood. No,
I knew then what could be lost.
Paul Jones: “Once upon a time, I took a break from poetry writing to help the open source-open information movement and to help raise my son. Thirty years later, I helped design the contents for a very long lasting library/archive that was sent to the moon — twice so far. What does that have to do with poetry? Pattern-loving and of course the interlocking Trinity of Creation — Tradition, Experience, and Imagination.” Online: smalljones.com and @smalljones on most social media: Insta, Facebook, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, X, etc.