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A Song Shall Rise
Sandy McPherson Carrubba Geary

We are living our last April, May,

and June together. My husband’s illness

is terminal we both understand.

I decide music may lighten our

mood, help us rise above the tension.

So I begin to sing a familiar

song when his voice joins in but we both

know only a few bars and then hum.

”I never realized,” he says,

”All those old songs we like sound the same.

A few words and then hmmm, hmmm.”

He laughs and I do, too. The laughter

becomes a song we can both sing.

This day we laugh an entire symphony.

—
Buffalo, NY, writer/poet Sandy McPherson Carrubba Geary has had poems published in Nostalgia, The Kerf, Earth’s Daughters, The Shine Journal, the Buffalo News Poetry Page, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Brush Strokes, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. Her essays have been published in The Healing Muse, Starving Writer Review, and in the Voices of Alzheimer’s and Voices of Lung Cancer books, as well as several Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Lynx Eye, The Critic, St. Anthony Messenger, and others have published her short stories. Currently, she curates a poetry series at an arts cafe in Amherst, NY.

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