Knocked Back
So we moved out, sad in the vast offing,
having our precious lives, but not our friends.
— Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald
So the impossible rushes on
somehow I sleep
What to feel?
I expected to see you, like the sun
the next day
I still talk to you and feel you
in the lake Somehow
I am getting through all these impossibles
like summer
Emptied out
I am falling splendidly
everything falling along with me
My body returned to me after a long while
What would be a data breach of the dead?
What I wanted was the notion of a love
that could carry over from one life
time to another
more mermaid sightings
our sign
The skirts of Hurricane Debbie sweep up the coast
if it’s not connected to grief, I can’t deal
The loon waited (for me?) beyond the lily pads
If anyone could paddle through the sky, it would be you
but how could you see me?
maybe like recalling
a film you once played in?
We are sad only for ourselves.
There were no more years.
All the famous poet’s velvets and silks
ruined by mildew and spider egg sacs.
Your kids scattered some of you centerfield
in Fenway after a Red Sox game
I am a repository of a vanished time
my kid says He can’t imagine the quiet
When the power goes out I remember
staring out the window listening to the wind
Weather is everything
Elephants listen for rain with their feet
Worms surface to rain’s drum
Gulls do a rain dance to trick worms into rising
In Fiji, some could call up turtles from the sea
Everything needs to eat constantly or die
Even the soil is alive
The whole world eating and digesting itself, and growing
The garden puts itself to bed, each insect sings itself to sleep
I dreamt someone sent me my old stuffed dog, Lady,
but burnt black
Death did us part.
First published in the River Heron Review.