Produced by Dennis Camire

This week’s poem is by the current Maine poet laureate, Stuart Kestenbaum. His most recent book is Only Now, Deerbrook Editions.

 

Laboratory

By Stuart Kestenbaum

 

We’re always thinking of those hours

of splendor in the grass, the glory

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in the flowers and trying not to grieve

as if grieving is bad for us, but it’s

 

one of those necessary vitamins

for which there must be a required

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daily amount as much as there is for

happiness and if you were a scientist

 

in the laboratory of life you would be

pouring the sorrow and happiness

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back and forth in the test tubes,

heating them together on your

 

Bunsen burner, hoping to get them

to combine so that we could go beyond

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one or the other, go beyond the grief

that is whispering in our ears.

 

We would have the two together,

the perfect combination, the joy

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and sorrow, the call and response,

the wind and the leaves, the sprout and the earth,

 

the compost and the seed, because everything

needs something else to make it whole,

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even the hole needs its own emptiness

the call in the dark, the echo in the light.

 

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu