After Words
–remembering Jane Kenyon
Alone in their farmhouse for
twenty years now
his days still turn on an
axle of grief.
In his face, earthy as a potter’s wheel,
you read a life carved deep
ruts from wagon wheels
of childhood
trenches from
the same old tears
she is everywhere
he is wild-haired and bearded
Moses down from Mount Kearsarge
forehead high and immutable as
words chiseled in stone
she is everywhere
her fingers grip
the handle of the
tea kettle on the
Glenwood range
her hands knead the dough in
earthenware bowls
balancing on
the shelf
she is everywhere
she did not wait
to grow old but died first
so indelible her verse,
peonies in her garden
still raise their heavy heads
and blush, remembering.
One eyebrow a stiff peak,
he sits by
the white kitchen door
remembering
blue-flanneled sinewy arms,
artisan hands at rest,
he sits by the
white kitchen door
alert for the sound of
her coming in
her eyes to find then
rest on him
the labors of his pen,
carved deep,
linger upstairs
on her footstool.
A note: Poets Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall were married from
1972 until her death in 1995 at age 47.
“After Words” was inspired by a photograph on the front of
The Selected Poems of Donald Hall, 2015. He died in 2018
at age 89.
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Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Dead Pets Poetry Anthology (Transcendent Zero Press, 2023), and online poetry journals including The New Verse News, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. She resides in Cherokee County, Texas.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 