My children dragged me kicking and screaming into poems and their poets in the 90’s. And I am ever thankful that they did. Now, I wonder if I could live without it, without expressing myself in it, without giving the poetry of Scripture its due. This week I discovered Marianne Moore, a modernist poet whose work is straightforward, direct, to-the-point; qualities I find most attractive. I use Moore’s line “because they are useful” to explain why, in my grief over Tyler’s death, poetry matters.
Following Moore’s opening in her poem “Poetry” are four poems written during January and February 2023 that I find “useful” to express my emptiness, my unending sorrow.
“Poetry,” Marianne Moore
I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this
fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers
that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they
are
useful . . .
Flowers 
Monthly,
Without fail,
Flowers
Are placed
Where his body
Rests.
He is with us
We are with him
Forever joined, though
Earthly
Presence
Parted
All, save, one day
Each month where
We gather again.
AgainThoughts
(Pinballs)
Careening
Lighting the board
Sounding the game
Scoring points
Eventually disappearing
Into the center chasm
Frantic flippers
Unable to stop
The disappearance.
And so I write
Hoping to capture
A moment where
He appears to me again.
Hero
To honor a fallen comrade
Military air units fly an aerial salute,
Called, “the missing man formation”
Signifying that one soldier
Did not come home
But gave the ultimate
Sacrifice
To preserve
And protect
Others,
His mission
Complete.
At the end of every conversation, I would say,
“Son, you face horrors I will never know.
You’ll always be my hero.”
StorehouseBelongings packed
The house is empty
Just as it was
When he moved in
For sale signs we took down
Are now up again.
The walls are bare
My spirit is bare
My prayers are bare.
Wheeler Mission is home
For his possessions now
As I stare vacantly at the wall
No thought in my head
But space enough to fill
A storehouse of memories.
And I weep.