Sarah Hina
BoyThey pulled you out between White’s Mill and Currier Street, about a mile from the bridge where you parked. The river is warmer than it was in March when everyone was looking and putting up signs and later on, looking less, checking on Facebook to report what your mom said, connecting the dots to fashion a lede. You were “Missing Athens Man.” Knives in the wood after a knife-throwing act. A stain of old pain in the rearview reflection. How come we hadn’t learned the lesson? You left your keys in the ignition. There was goodness there. In the swell. Everyone shouldering hope and doubt on competing scales. It seemed the proof you were looking for: if life has worth, people will fight for it; if people fight, living is worth it. It made sense, on its face. You had a great smile. I could see your mother’s hope in it. You wore your hair long and it made you look vulnerable. You probably would have hated this, but “sweet” is the word that springs to mind. This world is hard on the gentle boys. And I keep trying to recall if the pizza delivery guy had long hair or short, the week before Christmas we got pizza at work. Why should I want to put you there? What could it possibly matter? Your mother said she’d come for you. Just hang tighter. Once the weather turned, I ran the section of the bike path that bends to the river forward and back and forward again, pacing myself to its muted rhythm. Its crooked spine, infrequent joggers. The birds were sharp—soft—all together, both at once. The wind in the grass was a woman’s dress, a mouthful of milk on a taut clothesline. Shine Shine ShineFog on the hillside
and running through my lungs The sun spokes through the wings of a sparrow as it beats a bright path across the field spilled open with dew-dappled spiderwebs like a pirate deciding his treasure was ours Shine shine shine Later, a red leaf takes off on a lark and gambols downriver and I am the only one wise to its stumble, its easeful incision into a current peopled by pond skaters saving their best dance for light A fawn pokes its nose through the brush alongside me to look, with alarm and-- curiosity JammedI never know where
a line break should fall or how to split my team into squads. I'd make a lousy coach, I wager; I'd have made a worser surgeon. The tension comes from competing draws: a desire to hem water like the lake would and the instinct to fray, flow, stop and fake, and en- jamb it like a river does. telegramafter the Christmas lights
and before the thaw a secret kiss betwixt mistletoe and snowflake two cardinals weaving romance in dots and dashes great staccato leaps of burbling gossip on a white parchment day in the middle of a fairyland I transcribe them faithfully including an incredible bit at the end with a berry InflationOur religion is awe
but our practice is flawed, too busy counting the tasks before us to contemplate the quanta of astonishments we breathe. To wit: the universe's expansion has been in action for 13.8 billion years but that fact is nothing compared to this: it's not letting up, but getting faster. And I have known you this many years. And my love keeps growing, growing even as time so softly chimes: you will never catch me. TintinnabulationWe had bells in our mouths
back then we did and every word was a clang to the ribs and every conversation with you a wedding Where the brides wore laughter and the grooms were clappers and every guest inside a mile smiled Because bells are contagious And so were we |
My son plays baseball on the fields nearby.
But you were a rustle in the thirsty brush, drawing my thoughts as my feet held the line because I saw the men huddled across the bank-- sonar trawling, sirens off. The water flashing its teeth in the sun. There and back, I took the bridge, culling the edges with my eyes, reading the gaps between the lines, seeing the eddies bubble and froth, disturbed by the dead limbs, big rocks, uprooted trunks. Trespassing on something that wasn’t mine. Even now, not sure what I’m doing here. But you see how absence becomes abyss and you think, God, how do they carry this? I absorbed you. Not impulsively, not all at once, but incrementally, with the herd. We swallowed you in desperate sips. You sank in, like tea, leaving leaves at the end. An archetype with a shape pulled from the caves. The lost son. Come back. Your brother has killed the fattened calf. For you. Come back. Won’t you hear? And now I want to take your picture down, so that she won’t have to. I want to hug my children tighter, preserving their shape in a better forever. We never learn. It never makes sense. You needed more time. Pain is a bridge. The paper said you left a poem behind. It’s April now. Winter was hard. The lilac is late this year. When to WhereWhen I die
let it happen outside in the arms of a faithless Spring Let the light go out near water and trees; let someone say after, “Her eyes were open” Let the driftwood drift; let the fish go blurp; let the vulture circle an infinite earth Let my breath be swept by the next stiff breeze; let a million leaves all shuffle the deck Let the sky stay blue as my face falls slack; let the sun roll off the tip of my tongue Where over the chasm, and without a pause, the insects will strum some summer hymn and the birds will raise their voice to a head, crowning-- Yes! Yes! The song plays on ElevationThe church bells rang
and the cardinals flew An altar of blood keeping the two Safe across the city's walls Until their final dying fall. When later, the violin player starts and fails to make a woman from gut and hair, of air and longing but I'll give him points for trying. For Love, what is deeper than Death but You? And how weak the word that wants Your flesh but bends before such broken bread. And the Record SlippedIntimacy lives
in that band of skin above a man's collar beneath the draw of his barber's blade Where Summer's burn slides into its white Winter bed And in the passage, a woman's Fall DaveI want to be like
Michelangelo-- I want to see David in a block of ocean and carve until I set him free. But we can't all be Renaissance idols and sometimes a poem is just a guy named Dave. Naked Dave, on a naked beach, affecting an air of bonhomie for the seagulls, crabs and jellyfish per some new-age philosophy-- carrying his whole dear self, in lieu of a sling. PassingsI saw an albino fawn
outside the window on the day you passed and it saw me I thought Before I turned to take your hand and say my last goodbye Your hand was smooth and broad and white beneath my own like wood stripped free of bark ❦ |