Gretchen Filart
after Mary Oliver’s In Blackwater Woods
I love this world
as I do my daughter at bedtime –
skinned knees from sprinting
before she shutters her eyelids.
I tauten the blanket to her chin,
the years assembling from zero to now.
Her supple, puny hands in my wrinkled palms.
A delicate whole thing
embraced by one’s splintering.
I don’t pray
with words. I sit inside this reverie,
knowing her
flesh, breath, fissures
& the slivers of light passing through
will one day cease
to exist. I only have this
pause that saves me.
Gretchen Filart
GRETCHEN FILART is a writer of poems and creative nonfiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Rappler, Philippines Free Press, Door Is A Jar, Rejection Lit, Maudlin House, Janus Literary, Defunkt Mag, and elsewhere. She resides in the Philippines with her daughter and kooky cats and dogs. Say hi on Twitter @gretchenfilart, on Instagram @ourworldinwords_, or her website, ourworldinwords.com.
Art: “The Journey” by Cat DM, Digital Illustration