THIS TOO SHALL PASS
~ Lisa Ann Reilich
This ache in my chest — smooth rounded boulder crushing
my sternum — grinding it to white bone meal before
my wondering gaze, preventing even breath;
This salt in my eyes, stuck and stinging in unseen
nooks and crevices, never falling, burning slow instead;
This six-year molar — bottom-left with silver amalgam
filling — that has been breaking, failing in my mouth for
close to 50 years — that I can’t bring myself to give up to
extraction, preferring it as it is — ragged and ripe — rather
than disappeared from, or further altered, in my jaw;
This spine that straightens more slowly and with more
stiffness each progressive early morning, requiring me
to be gentle, rest flat longer, so it can tenderly nurse me,
ready me for each new ponderous day;
These knees that seem to want to bend backward
rather than forward, creaking at the hinges, buckling
just when I need them to carry me forward most;
You and your dimpled crooked smile, your puckish
twinkling light animating dark chocolate eyes one could
backfloat in endlessly — pools that have refracted more
pain than I ever imagined possible for you or them to bare;
My Mother, my Fathers, my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins — my
Babes — along with this stoically sad solitary alabaster rhinoceros,
splashing aimlessly in zoo puddles for our amusement, and
the not-so-cuddly Panda next to her behind bars;
This sturdy farmhouse my hands built — my refuge, shelter and jail,
along with this land I dutifully tend, caress — and sometimes curse,
home/land that will inevitably be swallowed by well-intentioned
oblivious summer folk — or the sea — or both, one quickly after
the other, if God indeed still persists;
These endearing goats I’ve birthed, of mucous wiped clean, each
named with fresh joy as they take their first breaths — simultaneously
by me enslaved, my beloved indentured servants who feed
my disappearing body, just as I feed theirs, day
after twin forsaken/blessèd day.
It will all pass.
Just so.
Just now, our Great Pyrenees, Moonshadow, just a puppy herself —
our Guardian in training — from the pitch-black maple and fir
forest-swallowed driveway edge sounds her faithful, sharp and
rumbling, insistent instinctive alarm:
“It is passing! It is passing! Just now! There it goes!”
So near the wild edge of it all, and yet —
so simultaneously trapped, betwixt,
between —
so seemingly far.
It’ll pass, all, yes. I know.
But for tonight,
let it stay —
Let it all linger fully, traced in cool damp Earth by my still nimble
fingertips — scent of moldering rusted leaves and pine pitch
in my nostrils, taste of wood smoke under my tongue, the feel
of you, embraced deeply, in my waiting welcoming arms.
Let me wrap myself in all
their indescribable collective unifying heaviness on this chill
pre-winter night, lending me temporary comfort — a weighted
patchwork denim cloak soaked in nourishing marrow. May it
give me strength for that day yet to come.
It will all indeed pass. I know. Yet, please —
just for this night —
Let it all hold me, suspend me in this woven hammock
of liminal space and time, sway me
gently in soft tattered blues away
from that certain breeze to come —
and stay. Let it —
Stay.
From Lisa’s second poetry collection THE CLOUDS IN OUR EYES, 2025.
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