Laura Wang

Sick Day's Delirium

That I did not foresee it, when I set

Your name and life within my poems—that I

Had done what those who plant a landmine do—

Is no surprise. We speak of death with ease,

When it is someone we don’t know that’s dead.

And when we write or say a brother’s name,

The name itself stands out so singular,

We can’t conceive that in a breath that breath

Might cease to be. We think of those we love,

Rather, as free from change (at least that change),

As if the simple speaking of their name

Appointed them among the constellations.

They will be always circling above,

Their presence even logged on ancient maps

And taken for a lasting point of reference

By which all moving courses may be measured

With nothing but the raising of our eyes.

But you have proved us wrong. And now I see.

Laura Wang is a high school English teacher in Honolulu, Hawaii, the city where she grew up. Some of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Christian Century, The Windhover, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and Bamboo Ridge. Originally trained as a medievalist, she has also published scholarship on Chaucer and on the fifteenth-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson.