by Dan Gerber

Nothing happens right now. Everything new
we know, we learned a flickering minute ago.

A towering, anvil-shaped, cloud appears out there
on the horizon line. A one-ship armada.

We watch it growing over the afternoon,
moving this way, growing closer,

billowing, as it gives up its distance
and loses its distinctness as a thing.

more like us now, the atmosphere we are
becoming, the weather we will be.

by Dan Gerber

Happy you are just the poor soul you are
and not some other poor soul because

what passes for happiness must always end, you
must return, after the giddy joy of Christmas,

to the cold, unloving, isolation, among all
the other isolates, the exiles all sent back

to the prison of their boarding schools, and this
haunts you with the dread of having, again,

to be a child, sent back to every sorrow
you would, with any power, choose to escape,

found guilty of being who you are, the
number on your cell for being born.

by Dan Gerber

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
—Philip Larkin

After you died, I felt a bit betrayed,
as if you didn’t show up for lunch

or a motorcycle ride we’d planned, a
ceremony you skipped out on.

I am wishing you good health, though
maybe now, that’s no longer a concern.

Maybe I should just wish you well, though
wishes are only wishes and may be,

where you are, simply something long let go. Oh,
I wish you could tell me of your life,

and do you still call what you know now, life?
This separation seems almost comical.

In my consciousness you still breathe,
because I am still conscious, breathing.

When I inhale, your face appears, and
when I breathe out, it dissolves in a smile.

by Dan Gerber

Danielle Scott Merrill February 20, 1959 – March 26, 2025

Gone, gone, to the other shore, crossed over,
already arrived, completely awake, so be it!
–Mantra of the Heart Sutra

Sometimes it feels we are here alone
with others coming and going like weather.

There is a dark side of life, always with us,
walking beside us, knowing more than we

can know, containing our light in its shade.
You knew this. In our last conversation, in

what little voice you had left, you said,
“I love you uncle, and I’m not afraid.

I know what’s on the other side,” you said.
Dear Matchmaker, a new match for you and

you already a t home where you discover,
again, who and where you have always been,

still brimming with advice about the
care of our cats and dogs.

Life tells us that grief dies into
what we are grieving, and, in that sense

restores us, more feeling, more human,
and thus holy, holding my sense of you here now,

a saint to the lost animals and the
human hearts into which they are delivered,

you now among angel beings,
as you have always been.