By Michael Ryan
For John Skoyles
My daughter made drawings with the pens you sent,
line drawings that suggest the things they represent,
different from any drawings she — at ten — had done,
closer to real art, implying what the mind fills in.
For her mother she made a flower fragile on its stem;
for me, a lion, calm, contained, but not a handsome one.
She drew a lion for me once before, on a get-well card,
and wrote I must be brave even when it’s hard.
Such love is healing — as you know, my friend,
especially when it comes unbidden from our children
despite the flaws they see so vividly in us.
Who can love you as your child does?
Your son so ill, the brutal chemo, his looming loss
owning you now — yet you would be this generous
to think of my child. With the pens you sent
she has made I hope a healing instrument.
Source: Poetry (July 2013)
Poet Bio
More By This Poet
Self-Help
What kind of delusion are you under?
The life he hid just knocked you flat.
You see the lightning but not the thunder.
What God hath joined let no man put asunder.
Did God know you’d marry a rat?
What kind of delusion are you...
Larkinesque
Reading in the paper a summary
of a five-year psychological study
that shows those perceived as most beautiful
are treated differently,
I think they could have just asked me,
remembering a kind of pudgy kid
and late puberty, the bloody noses
and wisecracks because I wore...
More Poems about Arts & Sciences
Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:
One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.
When they read her name...
Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask
I feel you
...
More Poems about Living
Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:
One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.
When they read her name...
Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask
I feel you
...
More Poems about Love
Riddance
Ok, we’ve rendered
the rendition
how often?
What were we trying
to get rid of?
We exposed the homeless
character of desire
to the weather.
Shall we talk
about the weather
worsening four times
faster than expected,
eight times,
until the joy
of pattern recognition
kicks in?
Until the crest
...
My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow
but all I want to do is marry them on a beach
that refuses to take itself too seriously.
So much of our lives has been serious.
Over time, I’ve learned that love is most astonishing
when it persists after learning where we come...