To the Dear Dead

 

To the Dear Dead

 

My dead do not sing to me. Though

they refuse to stay dead they

seem to moan, lost in layers of time,

layers of regret, wafting tunelessly

through my memories, details drifting

as in a dream or shifting into new truths,              

yearning to tell some story or other.

 

Listening to the air moving in vacant

swarms, their mournful voices carried

on the wind, I will my dear dead to love

me. I would try again, spread (open)

my arms, truly           hold them, rock them

with Cordelia lullabies, but there they go

--my ghosts, lost in the cold air of vanishing time.

 

 

Cordelia M. Hanemann              

  

Cordelia Hanemann is currently a practicing writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. A retired professor of English at Campbell University, she has published in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Southwestern Review, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Poet Magazine's new anthology, Friends and Friendship, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Her poem, "photo-op" was a finalist in the Poems of Resistance competition at Sable Press and her poem "Cezanne's Apples" was nominated for a Pushcart. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.