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A Garden at Night

for Michael Burkard (1947-2024)

 

After you died,

you had a dinner party

in a garden at night

Our table for four

down wide stone steps

Green leaves starred

with flowers it was too

dark to see them living

around us but I could

feel them breathing in

our breathing out

that tenderness only

our table lit   ourselves

circled around it you

across from me

 

Two friends of yours   men

on either side

You’d cooked a dish

with truffles which

was funny as in life my

life with you you

couldn’t really cook

once spooning tuna

from a tin into soup

on the stove trying

to get some protein in

 

Even in the afterlife

your guests picky

eaters   one man & I

both had items on our

plates we couldn’t eat

& you bowed your

head in laughter

waves of it shaking

so hard it shut

your eyes & you said

that the man & I

could give each other

what we didn’t want

 

You’d figured out

the entire dilemma &

were so delighted

As when we wanted

to open the Entire Dilemma

Bakery with each cookie

named for a poet

the round shortbread

with a chocolate thumbprint

in the center: the Neruda

poet after poet

deciding what their cookie

would be it seemed we

could just imagine a thing

& it might appear

the happiest I’ve ever

seen you: head bent

eyes down shoulders shaking

body letting go laughing

& laughing look up

I want to say look up.

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Kelle Groom

Kelle Groom’s fifth poetry collection, The Book of Miracles, will be published in the Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, Spring 2027. She is the author of four previous collections, Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and New York Times Editors' Choice; and How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press). An NEA Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and winner of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom’s work appears in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.