Bereft by Bill Frayer

One dark night, I lost my lovely,

fell into bed, bereft,

and slept a dreamless sleep.

By light of day, I sipped my tasteless tea;

robins scattered on the lawn,

poking for worms, indifferent

to my tragic circumstance.

I saw my neighbor get into his truck,

coffee in hand, to drive to work.

Hints of green poked through,

as the earth spun on its axis

as it always has

light dark light dark

in endless rhythm.

She ended.

I must go on,

surrounded by teeming life

and laws of physics.

I am carried along

by the robin,

by my neighbors,

by the promise of green,

by the dawning of light

where she dwells

invisible now.

---

Bill Frayer is a retired college English professor who lived and wrote in Mexico for ten years and now lives in Maine. He has had his poems published in The California Quarterly, The Poeming Pigeon, The Main Street Rag, Heydey Magazine, Poetry South, El Ojo del Lago, The Lake Chapala Review, and Magnapoets. He has published four collections of poems.