Over the Years
From Swallowing the Soap: New and Selected Poems by William Kloefkorn Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010.
Over the years
affection accumulates
until almost too much exists
for us to bear–yet
somehow we bear it,
grateful on the one hand
for the blood-sweet burden
fearful on the other hand
that, should it be taken
from our time-worn shoulders,
the lightness derived from loss
might bring us down.
Reproduced from Swallowing the Soap: New and Selected Poems by William Kloefkorn, edited and with an introduction by Ted Genoways, by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 2010 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.