For Diana By Gail Tyson

1952-2012
 
 
So many women have been here before:
at water’s edge on a pale shore, as if
time widens and narrows, a swinging door.
 
This dreamscape resurrects our old rapport—
difficult to decode as hieroglyphs.
So many women have been here. Before
 
you died you took up space in life much more
than I, a space that echoes with your absence.
Time narrows and widens. A swinging door,
 
it pivots me round—to days my self-doubt wore
away your patience like waves abrade a cliff—
so many. Women have been here before,
 
holding the one in mind whom death tore
away; just as I’m losing my grip
time narrows, then widens—a swinging door—
 
and you hug me back, like our sisters who swore
love was, is now, ever shall be as if
so many women have been here before.
Time widens and narrows, a swinging door.

Gail Tyson has given up writing poetry countless times, but it keeps returning like a lover who won’t quit. She has studied with fine poets: Mary Lane Potter, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Kathy Miles, Marilyn Kallet, Cathy Smith Bowers, and Menna Elfyn. Recent and upcoming journals that feature her poetry include Gyroscope Review, Romar Press, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Subterranean Blue Poetry. Still Point Arts Quarterly will publish a chapbook of her prose in 2020. She is an alumna of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program and the Dylan Thomas Summer School at the University of Wales.