Today's poem is by Eileen Cleary

Orphan Sky
        for John Keats

Don't say the father died; say night falls
as if a father off a horse. Don't say
the boy misses him. Or that the executor betrays.
Say father's a pink carnation the child recalls
as love but who left him in the care of no
such sorrel affection. Do not mention
the mother's desertion. Zinnia says mother's
soaked in sorrow. So sorry. And she's come home
to die. Strike this from his memory. At least
until he lodges in the quarters over the surgery
where no flowers speak. Only then, as he resets
the bones and closes the wounds,
let him name that vacancy.

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Copyright © 2023 Eileen Cleary All rights reserved
from 2 a.m. with Keats
Nixes Mate
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission