My Loves, the Earth, My Bones
after a diagnosis of osteoporosis at age 33
Sometimes finitude screams in my head
even when I try to let it be.
Like I try to wear with serenity
the fact that my bones are hollowing.
But there is a desperate edge to the miles.
As if I could hallow the bones as they hollow –
fill them with enough mountaintop,
enough deep woods to last
past when they’re too gone to take me there.
I am not talking only of bones.
I want to hear how the good things last
if what holds us up
can’t outlast us.
That’s what I think as I traipse
down the mountain in the rain
or wake up panicked in the night.
I go deeper into the mists of love
I need like thunder to see
even as I cling to a horse
in a dream, galloping
through the dark
with no reins.
*
On Not Becoming Bitter
to loneliness
Someone is sending you a message.
It says maybe we could be friends.
It says you do not have to bow to the gods
of What People Think and What People Say.
It says remember how the ruby-throated hummingbird
hung in the air to look you in the eye, and
wasn’t it just yesterday you were out
combing the maples for the owl
you thought you heard, whose hoots
rippled from deep in the leaves like a murmur?
It says if you let the questions unspool,
they will carry you down
their sparkling trails toward sleep.
The way through will come to you later.
It says don’t give up.
If it hurts, it is love.
What you think you see
is only the shadow of something more.
What you know
is a gift I would like to open.
It says things
come apart.
You have to let them
come apart.
*
Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Away (Finishing Line Press, 2023), and the chapbook, The Unsaid Words (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in publications such as Deep Wild, The Dewdrop, EcoTheo Review, and others. Find her online at www.jennawysongfilbrun.wixsite.com/poetry or on Instagram @jwfilbrun.
