Loss - Stuart K Watson
poem read by Allison Riechman-Bennett
Loss
Stuart K Watson
What does the loss
of one more person really mean,
so many more arriving
every minute, more
than the world has names
to set them all apart.
And so, we hear echoes
as they go, this way, that
about their almost identical
lives. Eating. Sleeping. Making
messes for another
to clean up. I think of a great
artist, ideas taking shape,
gone inside the rubble of a quake.
Her family cries for the loss
of her smile, not for what never
found a hook on a gallery wall.
And in her shadow world,
another dips her brush
for the first of a million
times into fresh paint.
Stuart Watson’s first collection of poetry,“Death is the Dismount,” was released by Poetry Box Publishing in summer 2026. His poetry is on the web.
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