Poetry by Christine DeHart

This part of October Stories is a collection of poems by Christine DeHart.

#1

I took the shovel

Nothing else to do

My sibling imploded the family

As I sat at dad’s deathbed my brother plotted

I had to bring mom back to reality

Her psychotic break

I cried in the kitchen in silence

No rest for me

 #2

He said ‘you’ve a thousand yard stare’

I reach back to blurry memories

I catch the corners

I miss the lost

I still dream of them

Can almost see them

I know

They know

I care

 #3

Hitherto convoluted

Tantamount pretension

Words he used

“Facetious”

He couldn’t spell it

So why use it?

Set himself out to sea

Funeral pyre away from me

When you left the earth

I was finally free

 #4

I think there is a beauty to see

In the last place I’ll ever be

I’ve always been dark, they say

A realist today

As I’ve always been

Enveloped in grief

No fear as I wither and die

To greet my sons

My final spin

Before next to them I lie

 #5

They say with age comes wisdom

Not necessarily

Wisdom aged me mercilessly

I have a sigil of my trauma

You can see physically

A tight, deep scar across my belly

Trauma I cannot hide

A sin that I was left bearing this

The scar which shows birth

Yet my babies died

 #6

I knew the prognosis two years ago

My reaching out was ignored

Sense of foreboding

I searched your name

That how I found out just two days ago

That you had died two weeks ago

You were predeceased by our twins

You are survived by our daughter

Not mentioned

We did not exist

 #7

The dogs steer clear

The cats lean in

Glass crashing at 3 am

A normal thing

You know how crystal rings

But in the morning, nothing there

To the dogs it’ rather a scare

Cats see the paranormal

Rather purranormal

Quite comfortable to me

 #8

Gnarled arthritic fingers

She still talks with her hands

Lily dreamed stories

To match old snapshots

Grandma as a child

Playing in the sand

Vinyl dragged out

Special because once hers

Soundtrack from the past

Pills fell

Plopped

In her water glass

Christine DeHart is a psychotherapist in private practice, a Reiki Master Teacher and a mother to many cats and dogs. She published her first book, A Different Kind of Mother under then-name Christine Howser to work through the death of her twin infant sons. It continues to be used by support groups, clergy and in book clubs. Christine enjoys bellydance, writing and playing music and all things darkly beautiful and unusual.