After all the years, and months, 
and days, and final hours, 
I stand close at the foot of the 
bed where the body cools. 

I have played music, read poems, 
and wept for the spirit gone 
elsewhere. In silence now, I 
push the blanket up past ankles, 

expose socks, then feet 
upon which I drip aromatic oils: 
frankincense and myrrh that 
someone suggested, and rose oil 

because she loved it, spread these 
scents and softness on skin I loved: her feet, 
knees, belly, sternum, throat, both ears, 
the forehead, crown of her skull. 

I kiss a cold brow and suddenly know 
how blessed I am, to have a body to anoint, 
forehead to kiss, hand to hold, cooling in 
a room that has a window, and a door, 

a body not scattered in pieces 
on a street, nor hopelessly lost 
under shattered buildings, or nothing more 
than blood aerosol drifting over a burnt field. 

I have the body of my beloved to touch, 
to gaze upon. I press quiet tears into 
the stiff skin of her pallid cheek, look 
once more for a flicker under eyelids; 

I can say goodbye again and again, ring 
the chimes, light the candle, hold her 
still hand, as this day’s sky goes dark. 

—In memory of Shaun Thomas (24 February 1956 – 5 November 2024):
Our love is transformed, not gone.

This poem follows another, “A Kind of Prayer for My Bedridden Wife” (in Issue 25 of MacQ, September 2024).

Thomas A. Thomas

was born in Illinois to a medical-doctor mother and a ballet-dancer father, and spent a lot of time off by himself in the woods, prairies, and fields, day and night, in all seasons. Thomas found his way to the University of Michigan (U.M.), where he studied with Donald Hall, and Gregory Orr, and workshopped some poems with Robert Bly. He won Minor and Major Hopwood Awards in Poetry, and his poem “Approaching Here” was choreographed and performed at U.M.

Thomas worked as Detroit Correspondent for a St. Louis-based Rock and Jazz magazine, Concert News, covering many of the major acts of the mid-1970s. After a couple of years of madness in New York City in the late Seventies, he camped his way west to Washington state, where he has happily made his home for more than 40 years. He now serves as a Board Member for the Olympia Poetry Network, and is active in numerous online poetry and photography groups.

His poems, photographs, and video recordings appear in print and online, most recently in The Banyan Review, Blue Heron Review, Cirque Journal, FemAsia Magazine, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Vox Populi, as well as in English-language anthologies and in translation to Spanish, Serbian, and Bengali. His work was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022 and for the Pushcart Prize in 2022 and 2024.

Thomas is the author of two books. The first is a collection of poems and photography, Getting Here (Trafford Publishing, 2005). The second is a memoir in poems, My Heart Is Not Asleep, among Kirkus Reviews’ six Best Indie Books of November, that “delicately reconstruct moments”* from a decade of caring for his late wife, as she gradually succumbed to early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Poet’s website: https://thomas-a-thomas.com

MoonPath Press (June, 2024)

*From Dzvinia Orlowsky’s blurb for the book.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ On Being Astonished and Capturing the Sight in a Poem, an interview of Thomas A. Thomas by Karen Hugg (8 May 2019).

(Hugg, pronounced “hewg,” is a professional horticulturist and writer of literary mysteries and nonfiction articles about plants. Her most recent book, published in 2022, is Leaf Your Troubles Behind: How to Destress and Grow Happiness Through Plants.)