Epitaph
He stole forsythia.
He lived for love.
He never got caught.
Copyright © 2014 Jim Moore. This poem originally appeared in Underground: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014). Used with permission of the author.
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Love in the Ruins
1
I remember my mother toward the end,
folding the tablecloth after dinner
so carefully,
as if it were the flag
of a country that no longer existed,
but once had ruled the world.
2
7 A.M. and the barefoot man
2018
So Be It
If the neighbor’s roof is a shamble of broken tiles, so be it.
If those tiles sit there for weeks. If no one does a thing about them.
If the sky is gray day after day and then snow falls and the tiles turn into
fragments of a broken alphabet traced in snow, clinging.
Darkness, then dawn.
If beauty, as hoped for; if death as promised.
There is no reason not to say it: the woman with her head bent, reading, is
beautiful.
2018
Diptych: My Bracelet
1
Before going to bed I take off my bracelet. It is meant to protect me. A dancer gave it to me: for decades she has known sorrow and beauty. Beloveds have come and gone. Mountains and forest fires. Lives that might have lived through her, but didn’t. Lives that do still live through her. I go to sleep, protected by her love, even though now my wrist is naked. All of you who have lived with the mysterious succession of love and grief, of dogs and dances, of yoga and tears: all of you will know just what I mean.
2
2015