no words together by Carla Sarett
I wish you’d been a justice of the court
so everyone would speak your name
As they grieved for the year past
on the first day of the new year
As if your name belonged
to their fathers, their mothers,
the lost giant Redwoods.
I would hear people in the elevator:
I have no words to express my sorrow.
There are no words.
We would have no words, together.
Together, we would have no words.
Carla Sarett's recent poems appear in Third Wednesday, Prole, One Art, Halfway Down the Stairs and elsewhere; her essays have been nominated for Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize. Carla has a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania and lives in San Francisco.