THE SORROW DANCE
For JJ
Last season’s sorrows cannot fade
before fresh wounds make her afraid.
The phone rings, only telling bad news
from great distance. Someone else to lose.
More long journeys she needs to make
She sighs and hangs up. Fresh plans made
too quickly. She packs clothes and weights
her case with memories and old news
of last season’s sorrows.
She’ll bear new wounds through heavy days,
shortening nights. She’ll fly off. Take
trips they ask of her. She can’t choose
anything else. She can’t refuse
this soft mercy. She has to face
this season’s sorrow.
Mark J. Mitchell has worked in hospital kitchens, fast food, retail wine and spirits, conventions, tourism, and warehouses. He has also been a working poet for almost 50 years.
An award-winning poet, he is the author of five full-length poetry collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka, Dante, and his wife, activist and documentarian Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco, where he makes his marginal living pointing out pretty things.
Grand Little Things 