If only there were stations of the air like the flamboyant clouds 
in Baroque paintings, around which putti peek 
in dizzying vistas, and—necks craned back—
we could count out the platforms of our apotheoses—
turning rose-gold in the setting sun... 

If there were ladders like Jacob’s, each rung 
festooned with bluebells and fuchsia 
like something out of Fragonard, each step 
a light bounce upward easy as the breeze, 
as a chorus of countertenor angels sings... 

But no. Bitter as a slap against the cheek by the hand 
of someone adored—that last crossover at first impossible 
to absorb: from spirit—our beloved’s animated 
face, her moving hands, her joys—to 2% 
of her original weight in white ash.

Judy Kronenfeld

has four full-length collections of poetry published, including Bird Flying Through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths (2nd ed. Antrim House, 2012), winner of the Litchfield Review poetry book prize for 2007. Groaning and Singing, her fifth collection, will be published by FutureCycle in early 2022.

Her poems have appeared in Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, Ghost Town, New Ohio Review, One (Jacar Press), Rattle, Slant, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verdad, and other journals, and in more than two dozen anthologies. Her stories are published in The Madison Review, The North American Review, Literary Mama, and other magazines, and her creative nonfiction, in Under the Sun, Hippocampus, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, and elsewhere. She is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing, UC Riverside, and an Associate Editor of Poemeleon.

Author’s website: http://judykronenfeld.com