The poetry inside you
is a chalice
and it is golden.

—”Chalice” by Kathryn Hohlwein,
May 18, 1930 – Nov. 18, 2024

•••

I sat in the poetry center waiting to
read a few of your poems on the eve
of the anniversary of your death,
holding a honey lozenge in my mouth
hoping to quell a seasonal cough.

Of course, you were there,
alive in the eyes of your children
who miss you terribly, coming
from the tender mouths of others
giving voice to your words.

And I thought of you who often found
new poems arriving at night in bed,
even in your final days in the hospital,
honeyed lines that you held in your mouth,
allowing them to melt into you, able
to recite them the next morning.

And in my own waiting, I felt your
sweetness against my own palate.
The cough did not arise, though
your words did from my mouth
at just the right time.

•••

For Laura Hohlwein and Reinhard Hohlwein
in memory of their mother, Kathryn Hohlwein

•••

“Chalice” is from the “Dear Poem” series, in Kathryn Hohlwein’s
collected works, The Little Chapel in Donegal © 2021, Random Lane Press.