Visitation
“I’m not a religious person. I don’t believe in things like that. But there is no other explanation than that my mother was with me.”
--Nick Chirls
We lived in the same town
but I didn’t know Catherine Chirls.
I knew what she looked like
because of her missing-person photo
taped to the door
of our local supermarket,
its backlit transparency haunting
me because I recognized
I’d seen her there
in more solid form many times.
Fast-forward to her memorial service
from which any sign
of her body’s missing
because it was vaporized
when the North Tower went down.
Her sixteen-year-old son
is giving the eulogy
before family and friends
who hold their breath
when a sparrow lands
like a tiny jet
on the top of Nick’s head
as he says the word mother.
He stops speaking to take it
in his hand and free it.
Richard Thomas Murray’s poems have appeared in The Dark Horse, The Seventh Quarry, The Moth, The Main Street Rag, Poetry East, Slipstream, The Bitter Oleander, Rattle, Santa Fe Literary Review, and additional journals. His first book of poems, Edisonia, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. He has taught creative writing to high school students at the United Nations International School in New York City and currently teaches undergraduates at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He promoted awareness of New Jersey’s Native American nations as a director of the New Jersey Folk Festival. For more information: richardthomasmurray.com.
