Jenny Ward Angyal

False Horizon

sleet 
against the window . . .
the warmth
a candle gives
flickering in darkness

I’m at the sink, washing dishes. In the next room, people linger over coffee and cake. They keep their voices low and sometimes spell out words. I overhear  d-e-a-t-h.  Wiping my hands on a dishtowel, I go into the dining room. My mother is there, although she’s been dead for 22 years. 

“There’s no point spelling,” I say. “I can spell very well. And besides, I know about death. I’ve known about it for years. I know that I will die, probably in about twenty years. And I know that you”—I put my hand on my mother’s shoulder—“will die before me.”

“For now, we’re all present,” I continue, “but one day we’ll dissolve back into absence.  And absence—that dark enigma—will go on generating new forms, new beings we can’t even imagine. So it’s OK.” 

No one speaks. 

I brush away a tear with the back of my hand and return to the kitchen.

I wake
to a winter sunrise
the sky
awash with colors
for which I have no names

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About the Author

Jenny Ward Angyal’s tanka have appeared widely in journals and are published in her collection, moonlight on water  (2016). She is tanka editor of Under the Basho.