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Lacey Jones Poem
Goodbye, Odie
My little old cat is dying.
His steps are awkward, eyes unfocussed
and he cries when he can’t see me.
I’m not sure I want to be in a world
that doesn’t have my tabby Familiar.
I am feeling widowed, again.
I’m resigned to be grieving, again
outliving another love who is dying.
There’s odd comfort in this ache, the strange familiar.
I gaze at him imploringly, in tears, unfocussed.
He is my greatest love in our small world.
He reaches out a snow- capped paw to tap me.
Here I go again, making it all about me,
fighting to accept death must happen, again.
It seems that these past years, this is my world,
sitting by the bedside of the dying,
as they gaze at unseen figures in the room, unfocussed,
but they hear them, and they smile, voices familiar.
I push my face in soft ginger fur, the scent familiar.
He always smelled like vanilla cookies, to me.
Green eyes stare into mine, they’re focussed.
I watch as death opaques the life from eyes, again.
I hear my husband’s voice as he was dying;
“I am tired. It’s time to leave this world.”
Death has been a constant in my world,
an entity with which I’m too familiar.
Such a selfish act on the part of the dying,
to love me absolutely, then leave me.
I feel the empty chest constriction of grief, again.
I clutch a lifeless body, I am unfocussed.
I can’t see through tears, unfocussed.
Odie leaves a gaping hole in my world.
I’ll struggle with condolences, again.
My grief is in my chest, pain so familiar.
The last time one I loved held on to me
while completing the evolution of dying.
No longer unfocussed, I rise to greet grief, again,
it’s now my world and it enfolds me,
my dark, familiar partner in the dance of dying.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Cailleach Cove
I was told, Veiled One
if I came here to die
that you would come to me
Come to me
The echo in this cave is soothing
I think I hear you
I
I have decided to die
here.
hear
At this time
I will not let my life
of freedom and choice
be ended by a disintegrating disease of
dripping into
you
My will, my mind, my body
I’m feeling tired so
I
I
will set my back against the
cool wall
call
of this cave
I see you
you
more clearly
as my breathing slows
and my eyes close
Your white gown and hair
share
shimmer, like this gritty
spill of
sand, that
my
my
fingers splay against.
Your pale hand is reaching for mine.
I am unable to lift it.
feel the spittle of spray
against my face and
hand
I feel much calmer
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Ghosts of Christmas Past
I do not fear the ghosts
of my Christmas past.
My yearly visit with each one
is a gift
a present
for this one day
I drive out to Lantzville Beach
and bring my dog along
My mother loved dogs and beaches
I wave when I see her figure on the rocky break
sea salted; wind tangled long red hair
streaming behind her
knees tucked to her chest.
She is singing a Gordon Lightfoot song
to coax the otters into view
We sing together
that one song
and on the last note
she is gone.
I travel south to the power line
behind the rifle range
The snow shawled copse
thick with rogue fir
I see my papa, and wave to him
he stands by a lone scotch pine
I nod acceptance, and he puts his hat on top of the tree
he points out the spots to place
the seedballs I’ve made for the cheeky nuthatches
When the last morsel is placed,
I look at my papa, his ruddy face set in firm Scottish approval
I watch him reach for his hat from the tree
and when I look back to see his face
he is gone
I gingerly step on the iced lake of Fourth Dam
It has seized weeping branches in a cold clutch
firmly under the water
I wave to my uncles, incautious in their immortal youth
deftly leaping over frozen tree trunks
in second hand skates, blades sharpened by their own hands
They beckon me to join them
but my skating days are long gone
Shrugging, they race each other to the end of the lake
entering the soft, stinging mist
and they are gone.
I push my mittened hands into my pockets,
watch my dog careen from side to side
on the trail leading to Collier Dam
My dog stops beside a lone fisherman
attempting, unsuccessfully,
to put a worm on a hook.
I laugh, and my father looks up,
his thick dark eyebrow raised
in mock sternness
I sit beside him,
watching him effortlessly throw the line out
it arcs in a perfect semi circle
before breaking the glassy surface
and scattering ripples.
I look up to him, to acknowledge the beauty of the cast
but he is gone
At Departure Bay Beach
I push the dog into the back, and move over to the passenger side
To make room for my polar bear husband.
His dark blue eyes search mine, and
when I smile,
the lines around his mouth I loved so much
deepen in happiness
With a diamond on Christmas Eve
we pledged to be engaged forever
to live in wicked, delightful sin
Scant years later
we broke that promise
to honour his dying wish
that he leave this world as my husband.
My eyes swim, and I push my mittens against them
when I open my eyes
he is gone
I come home, start the playlist on my phone
and sit at the kitchen table as Liona Boyd fills the room
I do some minor patchwork with paint
on the old ceramic Christmas tree
before I begin to place multicoloured bulbs in assorted holes.
My grandmother titters in the corner
She is rocking, and reading one of those spicy Harlequin Romances
she is obsessed with
I listen to her chide and harass the characters and
after an hour,
I put the star on top and call to her,
“Behold!”
But she is gone.
My ghosts of Christmas past will visit once a year
and in my melancholy
I am grateful.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Tonn Chliodhna
My lover haunts here, he hears me plead
with each ninth wave, I break and bleed.
I left Tir Tairngine, for Ciabhad’s love,
jealous MacLir would intercede
That deity in vengeance wrought
a spell borne from his lust and greed.
Lulled asleep, and wrapped in waves
I drowned in the harbor of Glandore sea.
I search for signs of Ciabhad,
although I’ve died, I am not freed
Each ninth wave, my grieving peaks
I stack my height and gather speed,
white capped waves of Goddess fists
hurl viciously both wood and weed.
My fingers clutch the shoreline sand,
and drag debris as I recede.
I sift through kelp, through shells and stone
and yet I know, I shan’t succeed.
Banshee laments pierce the wind,
split every stone and every weed.
I am Chliodhna, I’ve lost my love;
with each ninth wave, I break, and bleed.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Compassion Fatigue
Resentment looks a lot like Narcan in a sharp
and feels like it’s forcing out my will.
I grab them both; Naloxone and the tarp,
the outcome undetermined by my skill.
Same guy, same place, same drug; third time today,
his unresponsive body cold to touch.
Compassion has fatigued and crawled away,
when I see something tiny in his clutch;
A crucifix, a cross is glinting gold.
Immediate withdrawal floods through his veins;
I’ve plunged the needle, and I tightly hold;
his bloodied eyes snap alive with pain
despite the death wish of his toxic dope,
a Savior finds him worthy of His hope.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Turn of An Unfriendly Card
(Tarot 3 of Swords)
I cannot empathize with a shattered heart.
That image of a fragile, breakable baby pink orb
Is insulting to how I feel.
The turn of an unfriendly card depicts three swords
thrust into a still beating heart
I feel the sliver blade of that first sword
plunge hard, deep and succinctly.
I gasp with the pain in my chest
I feel the second as it severs sideways
and tears my heart from side to side
and as grief overwhelms my shredded heart,
the third slides neatly, methodically
down the middle until it dismembers
the connection to keeping it all together,
and I double over, sink to the floor, rock my body
and cry.
What I avoided is staring at me
daring me
to accept the inevitable and grow from upheaval
Become something greater that the puddle I’ve collapsed into,
grow something strong from the richness
of the blood-meal soaked earth.
The sword hurts and tears again while being pulled out
in necessary preparation for the healing to begin.
My heart is not fragile.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Ode to Tofitian Rain
What is in Tofino rain
that makes it smell so sweet?
A blend of berries, a certain strain
of sea salt, fog and peat
it smells of woodsmoke, tangy fir
and kelp washed up on shore
it smells of bitter evergreen
and dampened black bear fur,
blackberry wine that I just poured
and roasted coffee bean
it smells of maple, honeycomb
it smells of earth
it smells like home.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
The Fighting Temeraire
I lead this Queen to a guillotine
She follows me with dignity and grace
all English oak and 98 guns.
I am an unsuitable escort for my Lady,
my low born coarseness, the effort of towing her punctuated
by upward belches and grinding grunts, I am unbecoming as a royal guard
but she is silent, already haunted
She no longer flies the Union Jack as she did in battle
but a white flag of sale
and surrender
She is no longer adorned by ornament or armament
She will never again feel a storm fight to strip her sails from her body in violent passion
her clothes have been sold
In her nakedness, she is ethereal
but I am aware of Temeraire’s glorious past
The Battle of Trafalgar;
She swept to the side of the wounded HMS Victory,
and through intrepid maneuvers and savage fighting,
saved the shattered Victory from certain death,
and took two ships hostage.
But today, the sun sets in the distance on the days of elegant,
tall-masted warships
There are streaks of red in the sky and sea, that match the streaks of red
on her deck, that can’t be washed away
I’ve been paid a purse of coin to escort her to the other side.
As I am reluctantly relieved of the tow ropes that bind us,
I hope that pieces of her live on somewhere
In tribute to the Fighting Temeraine.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Capsizing the Costa Concordia
Divers wreathe silently through
the submerged corridors of a
140,000-ton wreck. Little fish
dark haphazardly through
the juxtaposition of tilted ballroom,
granite bars fixed in place.
Black waters lit green by headlamps
provide a surreal spotlight
for a loveseat drifting by
A vase of Chinese dollar plants poised delicately
on a marble counter.
Across the underwater tomb,
toppled chairs, tumbled together,
wait patiently to be repositioned
outside the dance floor.
There was nothing graceful about the dramatic demise
of this giantess,
listing to her death.
She was fatally wounded, being coaxed
too closely to the coast.
A hidden reef stood ground to gore
a 70ft gash, portside.
There was the moaning of mangled metal,
the shrieking of splitting steel,
as dark torrents were unleashed into her belly,
extinguishing her light.
“Go back to your cabins!”
and corridors flooded
“Go back to your cabins!”
and pumps failed.
“Captain! The passengers are making their own way to the lifeboats!”
echoes pointlessly through the abandoned bridge.
“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”
The Coast Guard thunders across dark waters
and the captain is stealing into his own lifeboat
to listen from the safety of shore.
Listening to the chaos,
interrupted by the agonized silence of passengers
too terrified to scream.
They hold their breath and try to calm each other
in the absence of authority.
“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”
But it’s dark, he pleads, and I can’t see anything...
A rope ladder is flung over the bow,
drowning passengers slinging, and
crawling crablike to Coast Guard boats
as the ship sinks to her side,
gripping 37 passengers in a horrifying embrace.
Scuba clad stewards of the dead
open the possessive clutch
of an atrium elevator
to extract bodies
protectively closed and sealed
in a grisly pantomime of protection.
The remains of the deceased
are floated to the light
to break the surface one last time.
The Costa Concordia shudders heavily,
sliding into her death repose.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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Lacey Jones Poem
Flock Plus One
Crouching among a gaggle of
dabbling Canadian geese,
a brown skinned child pushes back
long black hair,
intent on building a tidal pool
of which he can be King.
Extending a ridiculously long neck,
a goose wades gingerly into the water,
snapping his wings forward in a fluster,
indignant with the cold.
Another approaches the boy curiously,
black eyes assessing the construction;
haughtily disinterested, it continues ambling
along the inlet.
The sporadic hiss and honking of a gander
whose life mate is being wooed by another
doesn’t faze the child,
methodically tapping his palms
along the outskirts of his pond.
Another goose watches him,
unconcerned,
from her nest on a muskrat mound,
tiny hatchlings in yellow down
chirp soundlessly.
Spittles of rain dust the child’s
ebony hair
and the gaggle’s black feathers.
The cluster huddles around the boy,
having seemingly accepted him
as one of their own.
Copyright © Lacey Jones | Year Posted 2024
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