Today's poem is by Lex Runciman

Neap Tide
       

Those first weeks, his death made an insistence
                                                        to muscle through —
taking a shower, sleeping,
                        trying to sleep, the half refuge of work.
And though grief's injustice varied
                                                        as light varies
with June cumulus and wind,
                        it would neither be shed nor shifted
as a suitcase is set down and picked up again
                                                        with the other hand.
In an album
            packed in a box I do not wish to open,
its last-filled, black-paper pages
                                                        hold our first days,
eight photos each, eight grades —
                        his first through my twelfth,
the coats on our backs a cousin's, then mine, then his,
            all of them gray,
dates in white in our mother's cursive hand.
                                                        His grin, that happiness,
its brevity — as adults, we hardly spoke.
                        Adopted (we had that in common),
no one mistook us for brothers.

The day's only sun comes through late and low,
                        between horizon and overcast,
backlighting each wave
                        pale green to blue curl and fall,
blue curl and fall
            no language fixes nor beauty stays.

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Copyright © 2023 Lex Runciman All rights reserved
from Unlooked For
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission