Poem for Monday - The Naturalist's Last Love Poem

I found this poem on Verse Daily today. It speaks to me so clearly. At the moment I am nursing a dying cat --- my best animal friend for 11 years. Only last week he was himself ~ and now by increments he is becoming less and less himself, sleeping for most of the day and no longer eating like a teenage boy. He retains an interest in squirrels and hummingbirds --- this is for Otis.



The Naturalist's Last Love Poem

Nothing on earth
can last forever.
It's become an art:
rain and the river
cut cliffs. Cold swings;
leaves fall with fervor.
Birds molt: their wings
lost feather by feather.
By increments,
tides slink like fever
from shore. Immense,
they drift out further.
So, when she leaves,
the world's small favor:
I'll forget, by degrees—
if over and over.

Ashley Anna McHugh is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arkansas and is a senior editor of Linebreak. Her book, Into These Knots (lvan R. Uee), and chapbook, Become All Flame (LATR) are forthcoming. She won the 2009 Morton Marr Poetry Prize and has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writer's Conference and the West Chester University Poetry Conference.