Roberta Senechal de la Roche

Keepsake

We wear smooth all beloved things,
even though life itself might fail
from overuse, from all that touches us
over time, however softly.

Even gods erode from too much care
and must endure their lack of place in sky
invisible, inarticulate, while we go on
talking out loud, unthinking.

Shall we now lie down in the house of the sea
where the planet’s pulse is unfelt
the passing birds unseen,
and take its darkness as a lasting love?

Roberta Senechal de la Roche is an historian and poet of Miꞌkmaq and French- Canadian descent, born in western Maine. She now lives in the woods outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Colorado Review; Vallum; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Yemassee, Blue Mountain Review, Sequestrum, and Cold Mountain Review, among others. She has two prize-winning chapbooks: Blind Flowers (Arcadia Press) and After Eden (Heartland Review Press, 2019). A third chapbook, Winter Light, and her first book, Going Fast (2019) are published by David Robert Books.