Ribbons Ribbons Everywhere

On our wedding day

I tied ribbons on our porch,

my SE Portland version of prayer flags.

I don’t remember taking them down,

their tatters, wind horses,

galloping all over town.

Once on our anniversary

I remembered this. 

You had been dead for 4 years.

I bought ribbons, thick and thin,

transparent and opaque,

raspberry, indigo, lime, sunflower,

lavender, carnation pink, 

tied them to the tree limb 

outside our dining room window,

over the concrete statue of Kwan Yin.

My friends say it is a little miracle

they don’t fade like cotton dishtowels

hung on the line summer after summer.

Ice storms, heat waves, days so smoky

we can’t go outside, rain,

lots and lots of rain,

all have come through staining 

streaking tattooing their demands 

on everything but these ribbons.

Now I am worried- one of the secret worries

if let out might enable its existence,

might push it into reality,

but I’m telling you now,

if under my care they fade,

I will feel I failed,

even though time does what it does.

Now it could be that I get 

to see them waving day and night

so I can figure out how

to write the poem that convinces us

that death is just a thing

called the end, final,

if we choose those words

and don’t see ribbons,

ribbons everywhere.

This poem is included in Moon-Marked