Today's poem is by Jacob Butlett

Sonnet for Lolly
        —My Paternal Grandmother, Killed by Cancer in Hospice

Starlight scrawls her name in fog above the creek,
            yet I struggle to remember her voice: only tendrils
                            of speech remain, unstitching from memory's
frayed pall. Wind knuckles my nape on this trail,
            & alone, wearing her hat with a matching pink ribbon,
                            I recall those nights in hospice, how death touched
her bald head, how her mind folded into itself like
            a dune skirting the edge of a city, silent & sun-scorched.
                            I want to recall her voice, but I've become forgetful,
the fabric of her laughter forever lost on me, & I can’t
            stop imagining with tears in my eyes how her mind
                            must've darkened into a dusk smelling of the lilac
perfume on her hat, a scent loud as a newborn cardinal
            warbling high in flight above its nest, its song rising,
                            then ghosting gradually into these stubbled fields of stars.

Copyright © 2024 Jacob Butlett All rights reserved
from Crab Orchard Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission