Rachel Baum is the editor of Funeral and Memorial Service Readings Poems and Tributes (McFarland, 1999). Her poems have appeared in Raven’s Perch, Crosswinds, Third Wednesday, The Phare, and others. She chaired the committee that selected the first Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, NY. Her poetry chapbook, How to Rob a Convenience Store will be published by Cowboy Jamboree Press in 2024.
A field of white
Whisper it, the thing that you don’t want
to say, how or when or where you heard
that awful news, but here it is: someone
we adored, a child, is gone.
You know this boy, his face, his struggles,
his strengths; you know his parents, their love
and devotion, how they will see his colors spill
from a shoe they will find under his bed.
They will neaten the corners of papers where
he circled all of the right answers; they will listen
to his voice on a phone message, bright with excitement,
not for the telling, but in anticipation of their response.
Now they will try, if they can, to paint a field of white
with a finger or a brush, perhaps recite Teasdale or
Merwin or Seuss. They will be hugged by his friends,
so many friends, everyone absorbed by him, in him.
His lovely, generous spirit will be the blanket we winter in;
we might not know the weight of an infant on our chests
ever again; his mother and father will never forget
his sweet, sunny, and brief sojourn on theirs.