There is too much- The coming and going of pixels, products, and personalities, Demands, desires, deadlines, debts, Bandwidth saturation and buffering, Buffering, always, While the world continues to clickclick. Who hears anything? Who sees anything? Pay attention—a friend of mine just died. I didn't write acquaintance. I wrote friend. He needed things. Not much. I couldn't pay attention. It isn't all my fault, but Really it is. Not his death, but He could have left with more love and Care. Instead of waiting… Waiting for the buffering to clear.
Category Archives: Poetry
The Vigil
This is the vigil-
To protect you from the wolves
After the nights
Sitting up,
Singing to you
Heart Sutra.
“Don’t leave me.”
I won’t.
Holding your hand,
Touching your heart,
Fingers in your hair.
“You don’t get tired.”
It isn’t time for me
To rest.
For you though –
Watching you breath
Watching you stop.
Open the doors.
Sunrise.
Keep the wolves away.
Wait.
Feel the sudden change.
“Where is she?”
Gone. Gone. Beyond gone.
Beyond beyond.
To the other shore.
Let the people roll in,
Roll out.
Gather the sheet,
Tie it around your body,
Carry it away.
Carry it away.
You Almost Died
Today several times
You almost died
Without even knowing it
Disaster nearly struck
On your way to or from
There was the car
You didn’t see
Swerving around you
Recklessly
On the street were
Myriad near misses
And close calls as
You went about
Running errands
Among the people
You turned your head
Just before the cough
That would have
Laid you low
Along with the multiple
Diseases looking to latch
Onto to you and
The carrier who stayed home
Because she felt too ill
To go out or
The man who chose to
Leave the gun
In the case or
Took it out
Only on himself
Instead of the world
And you were
Unaware of all but
One you did notice that
Left you shaking
And whispering thanks.
Masks
I buried your masks
Today, in the warm sun,
In the shade of the oaks,
Where one day
There will be laughter,
Where the squirrels play,
Where the woodpecker nests,
Where the songbirds drop seeds.
First the gauze and plaster mold
That rested against your face,
Then the plaster decorated
As though you were a queen.
Now that there is a house
I am safe in,
I can stay in, and
No one can make me leave,
I can bury them.
A deep hole and a kiss
Longer than expected—
The contour of your lips,
A pause, a deep breath—
And no words.
There is nothing left to say.
Everything said
Has been said before.
I had thought to bury them
Under the plumeria,
Though you always loved trees
Far more than flowers.
But I might plant some flowers anyway.
Something Holy
I heard the jingling of a collar last night. Throughout the house, the tag against tag. I could hear them jangling from the denim in the cadence of her jaunt, side to side, side to side.
I looked outside. No dog. Certainly none inside. Back to bed, then, the jingling toward the room, side of the bed, stopped. I slept well.
I can’t remember when she left. A year? Two? But I remember her eyes. And the sound of her heart. As well as I remember her gutteral moan and her whistle. The rhythm of her step. How her face fit perfectly in the curve under my knee when she leaned into me. And how she looked at me when I knew she wanted it over. Her eyes, if they had been human, could not have made them more holy. 
Something Holy
I’ll find something holy in this.
In the blood and the vomit,
The urine and sad almond eyes.
Bodies come from the Earth,
And these are of the body.
So I will find something holy in this.
I will find something holy in the
Seizures, tetany, drugs,
The cost in dollars and sense.
In time, I’ll find something holy in this.
I will find something holy in the
Far-off stare, in the long breaths,
In the scent of wheat because
She always smelled like wheat
And was the color of golden bread
And, certainly, there is something holy in that.
I’ll find something holy in the last breath,
The closing of the eyes that won’t reopen,
The beat that slows, stops,
Leaves memory. And certainly,
There is something holy in that.
Object Permanence
There is a story you’d tell,
winter evenings,
of parents with linked hands,
a chain down the steep iced-hill,
a wall held on to
by the children going to school.
One by one, each making
his or her way, over the ice,
parent to parent, top to bottom,
slippery to safe, home to school.
And when the day was done,
back again, hand over hand,
climbing the hill,
school to home again,
in the safety of
parent to parent to parent.
When school was cancelled,
sledding from the top of the
snowy street to the bottom
where the traffic sped passed
with no idea to stop
and you’d say
how did we survive our childhood.
I think I Am, Maybe
I think, maybe,
I’m made of fog,
settled overnight,
In the dark,
Seems solid
From afar, look,
Walk through it.
There is no substance.
It dissipates into
Air, the sun rises,
There is nothing there.
Do you remember fogs?
Or a ghost, maybe,
An accumulation.
An aggregate of
Used tos, weres
I remembers,
Definitions,
Suppositions,
And faint ideas.
Walk through it.
There is no substance.
It dissipates into
Nothing, the sun rises,
There is nothing there.
When no one is around,
Who notices a ghost?
I can Hear the Angles
I can hear the angels
Sing songs only the angels
Sing songs of being
Neither here nor there
Angels and those
Close to death
Sing songs often sweetly
Sing songs below hearing
For all those
Neither here nor there
Hearing the songs of
Angels and those
Near to being angels
Sing songs I hear
Everywhere.
Adam Byrn Tritt 