Years ago one of my sons introduced me to the poetry of Jack Gilbert. I remain grateful. Gilbert's Collected Poems has just been published. I'll celebrate the occasion by recalling one of his poems that moved me when I first read it, and still does.
Married
I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife's hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko's avocado, I find
a long black hair tangled in the dirt.