Oh what do you do when a hero, a heroine
dies?
Where their battles a coincidence?
They were Nobel Prize material,
in their own fine humble way,
and now the light's off
front and back in that place they lived,
next to you.
When did you see them last
in good health,
but Christmastime.
And how much you missed or ignored
all the chances to have nice times,
the rare times of finding family
where one is not by blood,
that ease.

An old chair, a volume of
Encyclopedia Britannica
pulled from the rain,
a painting that hung in her house.
A letter opener.
Memories of a hostess,
of the most generous person you'll ever meet,
who lived through war,
and then saw people as
all the same.