Vox Populi
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Valerie Bacharach: Barbara, I’m Sipping Coffee
from the mug I bought when we were at the Carnegie Museum. Remember?
Black-capped chickadees and red berries. You wore your red shoes from Littles,
what was left of your hair in a topknot, samurai warrior sans sword.
Do you think the body endures, not flesh and bone, of course, but its essence or soul?
A goldfinch flashes in my neighbor’s tree. Branch after leafy branch sheared
off by men lifted upward on a massive crane straddling my street, the crane yellow
as the goldfinch. Perhaps the tree cradled its nest. Barbara, can a bird grieve?
Your body is ash, while mine ages, small bruises, muscle aches.
My hands have morphed into my mother’s; arthritic knuckles, thin skin, and yesterday I discovered her Mah Jong set dumped in a guest closet, burgundy case housing
ivory tiles painted with dragons, birds, flowers. I have two of your flower paintings.
The same set she used when we lived in cheap apartments on Virginia Lee Avenue.
This summer, a firefly resurgence in my yard, their brief light clicking
like those Mah Jong tiles. Like lit matches flashing in darkness.
Barbara, did you believe in souls? Can you remember the warmth of your son’s body,
the one who died way before you? I imagine my soul as small signal fires in my body’s
shadowed interior, brief illuminations, like dream remnants that drift to my mind’s surface
the way seaweed drifts before the Atlantic tires of it, deposits it on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
For years my husband and I and our boys, when they were both alive, spent a week there,
ate she-crab soup at the Froggy Dog, climbed to the top of Buxton’s lighthouse, collected pieces
of shells. Once my husband broke his shoulder boogie-boarding with the boys.
The entire trip home, Nathan said I love you, dad. I love you. Over and over
and over. I try to convince myself I still remember his infant body’s surprising heft,
but it becomes more and more difficult.
His milky scent, fluttering eyelashes, nails so delicate
I was afraid to trim them.
~~~~
Copyright 2026 Valerie Bacharach
Valerie Bacharach’s publications include Last Glimpse (Broadstone, 2024). She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Thank you all for your comments. Writing poetry helps me live with grief.
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Valerie, this is such a stunning tribute to grief. One of the best tender-grief poems I’ve read, and each couplet brought me deeper and deeper. Thank you. I would like to use this poem in my workshop, to show an example of how grief works.
Carine Topal
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Thank you for your kind words.
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I’d be honored for you to use my poem in your workshop.
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This poem catches me at an acute grief time: ICE killing a woman just a few blocks from George Floyd’s murder, over across the river from my house. I’m already tearing up. Just Monday I was on the street where she was killed, on my way to car repair, in a waiting room filled with Somali-Americans who appeared, it seemed, graced with happiness. Joking, introducing themselves to each other, smiling or nodding at me.
Just now, as these keys clatter, James Taylor is singing in the background: shower the people with love. Grief is a way of showering people, including yourself with love. I weep, however, for the city across the river: Minneapolis, and the undeserved grief that a large part of our current cultural milieu engenders.
One of the better grief poems I’ve read. And there have been many. But never too many, as grief is an integral part of the human condition.
Sorry for the pontificating. Just too sad to hold back right now.
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This comment is a beautiful elegy, Jim, a fitting companion for Valerie’s poem. Thank you.
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So much grief in this world. Writing, especially poetry, somehow helps.
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Reading and writing poetry has certainly helped me with the death of a beloved spouse, 8 years ago. Now that particular grief is more diffused, but a beautiful poem like yours soothes loss that is all around me/us. Thanks, and best wishes.
My mother lost a son before I was born, and it was an overwhelming grief she hid well, until she could not. But she died happy, love from others healed her despair. She also wrote poetry, much of it filled with humor and vigor.
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Beautiful, Jim. Thank you.
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Have you ever been caught in an ocean wave, tumbled and trying to find the surface? The magic of this poem, tugging of my name, description of aging body, the lesser goldfinches outside my window, memories and now, I emerge different and with admiration for the poet who directed this concert.
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Perfect, Barbara. Thank you!
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Yes, a beautiful poem. “His milky scent, fluttering eyelashes, nails so delicate
I was afraid to trim them.”
What if the nails were trimmed, disposed of; their molecules eventually breaking down to the atoms which never perish, but survive to reappear in an oak tree a thousand years from now or a goldfinch’s eye or another child’s delicate nails? What have we been part of before?
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Thanks, Leo. You’ve given me something to think about.
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What memorable moments & images in this touching poem. Such melancholy. And wonderful attention to sound. This is not only a keeper, but one to be read aloud when returned to… And as Christine Rhein says so well: “Poems like this one connect us, reconnect us…”
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Yes, I love the imagery of this poem. And the music.
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I believe in the soul of this remarkable poem.
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It is great, isn’t it?
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“Can a bird grieve?” The poem evokes that yes, the bird souls inside us grieve because we love so fiercely. And what an ending, which in a way, is not an ending. Thank you, Valerie–
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Thanks, Phil.
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A stunning poem. My heart aches and, at the same time, it feels comforted. Poems like this one connect us, reconnect us…
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Yes, elegies do connect us. Everyone feels grief, and this poem allows us to recognize it.
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A lovely elegy filled with touchstones rendered in hard substance, feather and flesh, weeds of the entire ocean of memory. Such a poem to settle into for our brand new year. I want to visit Pittsburgh, city of poets, again soon!
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City of poets, yes. this is one of the reasons that Eva and I moved to Pittsburgh 40 years ago.
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