Adele Kenny
Where the Dead Are Strangers
(After All Soul's Day by Jakub Schikaneder)
Past what we see, a river glistens with wind and sun. A bird rises
into the shape its wings make and recedes into sky. Deer graze
between stones where the forest is close, a tangle of underbrush
and leaves. One tomb's shadow reaches into another's.
Eyes filled with burdens (so much to do), we come to this place
where the dead are strangers—where there is no ache of ghosts—
the wages of grief only scrub grass and weeds that call us to
something beyond ourselves, something exact and perfect, more
absolute than the earth.
Bio
Adele Kenny, founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series, and poetry editor of Tiferet Journal, is the author of twenty-four books (poetry & nonfiction). Her poems have been published worldwide and have appeared in books and anthologies from Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. She is the recipient of various awards, including NJ State Arts Council poetry fellowships and Kean University's Distinguished Alumni Award. Her book, A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All was a 2016 Paterson Prize finalist. She has read in the US, England, Ireland, and France, and has twice been a Geraldine R. Dodge Festival poet. www.adelekenny.com