Mary Hills Kuck

The Beginning of the End
 
“Perhaps it’s the beginning of the end,” she said,
about the vertigo that finally gained its hold.
And isn’t that the thought of all of us who march
along to eighty, or have even passed the mark
already, knowing that the end is lowering,
the grainy distance leaving clues about how far
away it might be? We are left to second guess it,
or ignore it, or to face it with resolve.
 
But tell me what this fearful end is, anyway.
Is it when a glass held to the lips won’t fog?
Or when there is no heartbeat in the jugular?
It has to be that moment when we lose our grip
and can no longer bear the endless dizzy spinning
of the changing world we always thought we knew.


Fiftieth Anniversary
 
I cannot find the subtle space
where my soul ends and yours begins.
You’d think that we were in one skin,
so bound up are we in the grace
of children, memory, and place.
Without you I would be so thin.
I cannot find the subtle space
where my soul ends and yours begins.
Chance troubles now cannot erase
the joy that still remains within
the twining vines our souls have been.
Come, let us savor our embrace
and not yet find the subtle space
where my soul ends and yours begins.

Mary Hills Kuck, a born Midwesterner, has spent most of her adult life in the US Northeast and in Jamaica, West Indies. She has published poems in The Connecticut River Review, SLANT, Tipton Poetry Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, From the Depths, Poetry Quarterly, Main St. Rag, Amethyst, The Lyric and a number of other online and print journals. Intermittent Sacraments, her chapbook, was published in 2021 by Finishing Line Press. Her full-length book, Before I Forget, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and an Eric Hoffer Prize and was short-listed for the Kelsay Books Women’s Poetry Prize.