Untouchable by Terry Jude Miller
Image | Aakash Gupta
Untouchable
For C. K Williams
One day after their mother’s memorial service,
two septarian sisters are greeted by a cardinal
who lights gently in the baby sister’s palm.
When she pushes the visitor to the air
to give him back to the sky, he flits
rapidly to her shoulder, rests there waiting.
You can’t befriend death,
can’t disarm it with flattery
and invitations to coffee.
You come to terms with it
through manifestations it cannot touch,
like memories and bits of crochet.
Time guides all of us to enter
the open maw of death, gives
not one of us license for dismissal.
But death cannot keep a cardinal
from lighting upon a grieving sister’s shoulder,
cannot keep the miracle of love from falling from the sky.
© Terry Jude Miller
Terry Jude Miller lives in Houston, working in academia. His poems have received multiple Pushcart nominations. In 2024, his work was published in Sontag Mag, Encore, Equinox, Trigger Warning Magazine, Exomorphosis, Ars Sententia, The Nature of Things, The Bayou Review, Boundless, the Poetry At Round Top Anthology, and several other literary publications. Miller is the former 1st Vice Chancellor of the National Federation of States Poetry Societies. https://www.
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