Poetry By Whitney Vale

James Loesch CC



The Sunken Road

“Who , if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?”
Rainer Marie Rilke

I am haunted by what I do not know of your dying.
Do you hear my loneliness,
the dove in my heart

do you hear death bite into my age
do you hear the web of life falling?

As you lay dying,
a hospital bed became your last ship:
In your living room,
you asked, “is that for me”

when answered yes, you wept.
Were those your last words?
(No one can tell me.)

Tucked around your curled body, the sheet
caught each chambered sound.
Morphine increased heartbeat decreased.

I arrived after your passing
after your last
dialogue with the air    with the flame    with the earth    with the oceans.

Death came around the mountain,
driving 6 white horses, 
she carried you down a sunken road

They all came to greet you
(hallelujah)
Yes, they all came
(hallelujah)

I am not the same.
I sang the old song, the old tune to you                                                                                     
and I laughed with you again.

Here I am, begging
for that thing which wounds:
a charm of words to ring the white throat of the page.



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Whitney Vale, MFA Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University, has essays in Entropy, The Rumpus, Essay Daily, and The Black Fork Review, Poetry includes a chapbook, Journey with the Ferryman (Finishing Line Press) and poems in Gyroscope Review: The Crone Issue, Harpy Hybrid Review, Prospectus: A Literary Offering, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Quartet, RockPaperPoem, and  Crab Creek Review. A short story is included in The 2023 Writers Block Anthology (Hydra) and an essay in the newly released anthology, Awakenings: Stories of Bodies and Consciousness (ELJ Editions.)

She has been a finalist for the Joy Harjo award, Barry Lopez award, and Minerva Rising’s memoir award.