by Elisavietta Ritchie

WHY SOME NIGHTS I GO TO BED WITHOUT UNDRESSING

(For poets Josephine Jacobsen, Rod Jellema,
Irene Rouse, Roland Flint, Barri Armitage,
and David and Judy Ray, who lost sons and
a grandson in automobile accidents)

Even as my children scale
jungle gym and pine,
they too are swinging toward silence.

In desperate dreams I try to save
my daughter from the flood of night.
Still she drowns and drowns

while both my sons
spin nightmare wheels
against a thundering sky.

This wet midnight terribly awake
I pace the living room. My youngest son
is driving his broken Toyota home

from The Grateful Dead Live In Concert.
The storm keeps pouring over icing streets.
Finally I go to bed

but toss, alert for doors or else
strange strained voices on the phone,
and I do not undress.

-Originally published in Full Moon, 1984