From a glance at its title, we might expect Stuart Kestenbaum’s poem “Perhaps This Is the Way My Life Will End” to be a little dark. But the poem’s speaker conjures a surprising gentleness and light as he imagines his own demise – an ending that feels more like an opening, like an infinite and luminous belonging.
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of five collections of poems, most recently “How to Start Over” (Deerbrook Editions, 2019), and a collection of essays “The View from Here” (Brynmorgen Press). He’s the host of the Maine Public Radio program “Poems from Here” and the host/curator of the podcast Make/Time. He was appointed Maine’s poet laureate in 2016.
Perhaps This Is the Way My Life Will End
By Stuart Kestenbaum
I will find myself
walking down a hidden lane.
The spring rain
will have just ended
and I will smell the fertile earth.
I have never been
this present before.
My bones know
that I am home.
My teeth unclench.
Once I could fly kites so high
that they disappeared into another day.
Once I stared at a crystal bowl
dividing the light into
the unseen colors of the world.
Something is soaring
inside me or outside of me.
I can’t tell which.
Megan Grumbling is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Perhaps This Is the Way My Life Will End” copyright © 2019 by Stuart Kestenbaum. It appears by permission of the author.
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