Hospital Bed

Adam Rogers Gillette
b. May 22, 1984
d. August 22, 2000

He filled the bed.

Still just a boy, but already

hinting at the man he'd be

if he had not, instead

watched us crying there

from somewhere overhead

and waved goodbye.

He filled the bed

as he filled his years with ball games

of all kinds and cartwheels,

kindness, laughter, loyalty

to family, team and God,

who gifted him without revealing

it was only for awhile.

He filled the bed.

He filled his time on earth,

learning more and packing more into

his sixteen times around the sun 

than if he'd lived far longer.

He filled our hearts.

He always will.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2022

Prom Night

Three dresses. three dates, three proms

Fixing hair and fretting, getting butterflies.

Boys in tuxes looking overheated.

Girls whose mothers should be fearful.

Hey, did someone spike the punch?

The chaperones, at least, are having fun.

The music's loud as dancers ebb and flow

across the polished floor.

Fading photos that remind us we were young

and thought we knew a thing or two.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2022

Easter 1976

Of all the Easters I have lived,

there is but one unique. One weekend

out of all the rest when I was free of

family and obligation, free to wander

as I pleased. I drove from Carolina up to

West Virginia in my little Bug, across the

turnpike bridge, on to the Bryan’s house

where I could celebrate, relax, forget

about my college classes and relationships.

Most memorably, it was the first time

I experienced the luxury, the sprawl,

of being in a double bed all by myself.

I stretched my arms and legs and felt

like royalty with so much room. Now,

decades after, other Easter memories

inhabit one big pleasant room within my mind,

with cheerful thoughts of brand new dresses,

dyeing eggs and hiding them for little

pieces of myself around the yard, the smells

and sounds of corporate family dinners

that we could not duplicate this year.

I would never trade those memories away

but I am grateful for the slender queen

with long brown hair that sits there in a corner 
at the back, remembering and smiling 

as she stretches once again.

(c) 2019 Ellen Gillette

Year's End

It's been a year, or almost that,

and all the things we've done or seen
are waiting in the shadows 'til a random
conversation, dream, or memory
invites them back to center stage.
We count by months and days, and turn the pages
of our calendars remorselessly, the past
now past, let's keep it there unless we have
good reason to return. But that is when
we look ahead, make plans, anticipate the
great and glorious Not Yet Lived. When
counting memories, however, dates are
quite diminished in the scope of things unless
we argue that it had to be in spring, because
the incident occurred while sitting at a
baseball game, You're right, of course. It
was the spring. We use a different measurement,
how many tears were shed, or prayers prayed,
How many emails sent to sort a problem out,
important phone calls made to people that we love
or will not ever meet. The kisses, adding up,
embraces filling to the brim the bank
account that houses our emotions.
How many questions have been answered.
How many questions now remain to start the new year off.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014