Bowls, Emptied
I picture them always separate, unfilled, never nested among the others.
In descending order: yellow, green, red. The missing blue.
Concave, hollow, hemispherical, freed of conscience.
Other images – the skies, denser with age.
You stirring with a wooden spoon, cigarette smoldering nearby.
Or the itinerant smell of new sod and wet soil.
My knee aches whenever I traverse stairs or turn quickly.
Which holds more grief, these vessels or memory’s lapse?
Inverted, their capacity remains constant as the heavens, dark or light.
The paling dome, a memory of freshly pulled onion.
Squatting, you would patiently pluck weeds.
I bite my tongue and kneel to place the flowers.
Near this stone, where the crickets chirr and dew worms burrow.
By this mound and these blades of near-silent grass.
Where I accept this moment’s offering. And you do not.
“Bowls, Emptied” first appeared on the blog in January 2016, and was subsequently published in Galway Review in December 2016.
O at the Edges 
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Memory’s lapse holds more grief, I’d say.
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It certainly has a larger capacity!
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This poem always gets under my skin. So lovely.
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I’m so glad it resonates for you, PJ! Thank you.
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I have an empty space where the missing live….
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It’s a space that never fills.
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My brother. 18 years.
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A good friend, 21 years.
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I sometimes think of a large building with two pillars holding up the front. One of the pillars is gone. The building is tilting towards one side but it still stands.
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Sounds like you have some poems there…
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It’s the image that comes to me when I think of my brother. I hadn’t thought of making it a poem.
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It might be worth trying.
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Hi, Robert. Thanks for sharing such a well penned and crafted poem. The words and imagery reveal so well the fading loss of memory with its many different degrees of unraveling. Happy Writing. Have a wonderful day. Goff
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Thanks very much, Goff. Much appreciated.
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I’m eating a bowl of banana’s and ice-cream at the moment, maybe I should’ve had something more substantial, but after the empty bowl.. I had another beer…
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My bowl has cereal and bananas! But no beer…
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