by Donna Hilbert Because I awaken at 6:19 to pain as if my heart were a wishbone pulled apart, I am not surprised when they climb the stairs to tell me you are dead. Now I understand what fear is: waiting for the messenger to tell me what I know. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert A portion of ashes we buried, the portion remaining to be scattered sits on a shelf in my office, the container swathed in a flannel bag, like the bag protecting your tuxedo shoes. How handsome you were in formal clothes! Strangers often asked if you were someone. Should they ask for your autograph? The irreducible things that make up a person— ashes, bits of tooth and bone— transform from one noun into another. Before your death, Dear heart I didn’t know that physics and grammar are the same sad subject: the transformation of matter, transforming what matters. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert I refuse to say pass away or even die words both passive, natural, insist instead on killed, word cruel enough to pluck you from this life. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert One night you come back fat. When I ask why, you say, the dead don’t exercise, but we do eat dinner. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert Kathy gives me a card with angels on dolphin back swirling from sea to sky. I think of the morning last spring when from our window we spotted a pod of dolphin and you abandoned breakfast to join them for a swim. The card’s inscription: Together we will transcend the illusion that is time and space. Transcend. Joke on my license plate. Comic motto for the non-believer. Maybe where you are now you know what that word means. Not me. I’m in Mexico. Interregnum of old life and new. Angry with you for this dislocation. I loved you in my other life. I dreamt last night my friend left her green parrot in my care, but I failed to feed or give it water and when she came to claim it, the bird lay dead next to a vase of browning lilies. Suddenly, you appear in the dark sea of my dream, saying I don’t remember when we last made love. Be patient, Dear Heart, I’m learning how to love you dead. excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert for Lenore Brown In my heaven I wear white cashmere Armani, eat chocolate truffles without dribbling my breasts. The more Camels I smoke the better my breath smells and Cosmos and cabernet— all the fruit that I wish. Every day here is Great Hair Day and I always look ravishing, rested and thin. There are no duties in heaven, just one long salon with talk unfailingly brilliant. Infinitely witty and quick come to mind. No sputtering world for tiresome distraction. Up here, down there doesn’t come up for discussion. Life in heaven: endless insouciance, all bon mots and bonbons. Did I mention how superb is my French? And what of my poems? Now, Major Movies. Every one sold for Big Bucks and starring in all The Roles of a Lifetime is my favorite actress, the incomparable, inimitable, lovable Me. Excerpted from Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, Pearl Editions, 2004