Sometimes a poem breaks your heart in more than one place, and more than once.
Today I’m moved to share a poem from Familiar Dark, the 2021 chapbook by Fritz Eifrig, a poet living in Chicago and writing on Substack at The Compost Pile.1
There is much to say and admire about the poem, and I hope you’ll feel free do so in the comments, if you’re so inclined. For now, notice how the poet’s deft use of two possessive phrases (“our old feral cat,” “her house”) asserts connection, illuminating the “hard weather” and haunted conclusion of pure love offered and accepted at a necessary distance.
Thank you, Fritz, for sending me your chapbook and letting me share your work with the readers of Diary Poems.
AFTER A COLD STRETCH Fritz Eifrig the hard weather broke today, mild enough to get some outside clean-up done. snow piles sweating into slush, frozen ground speckled with sun. we hadn’t seen our old feral cat in a few days, and she’d looked ill for longer than that, a bag of bones skulking around the edges of the yard. so, I checked inside the little house we’d built for her, and sure enough. I lifted her out, body still mostly frozen, light as papier-mâché, a delicate husk, striped gray fur and curled white paws. meltwater rattled in the downspouts. my boots had come untied, the laces loose and soaked. I set her in a contractor’s bag with some straw from her house, taped it closed and called the city about pick-up and removal.
Fritz Eifrig’s poem “Across Chicago, the Oaks Are Having a Mast Year” appears in the current issue of Star 82 Review. As it happens, the same issue includes a poignant flash memoir by my friend Patricia Canright Smith, “Everything Not Forbidden Is Compulsory.”
Wow...that was a short but extremely dense and intense rollercoaster. Thank you so much for sharing. Amazing example of writing that shows rather than tells. An inspiration.
beautiful. rich. thank you for sharing!