I keep scraping the canvas
And painting him over again
But he keeps slipping away
—Edward Hirsch
Putting her fragments
Together in yet
Another way
Turning her differently-aged
Profiles this direction and that
So as to see new things
In different lights
Even though the outcome
Is always the same
Putting her repeated death
Against once-future events
Casting it into differing perspectives
The cherished daughters
Arriving years after
The fact of loss
Connecting her to a whole
World of living relations
Memories
Shaded with deepening insight
Never-before-seen colors added
To my basic box of crayons
Foreshortening my grief
Triangulating its source
As I scribble wax over oil
Still trying to get
A fix
On sorrow
