ISSUE: Spring 2008
“There is no loneliness like theirs.”
—James Wright
Nothing to hosanna,
you will be buried
Cold. Only the living
go on living.
Worship the wind-hover
while it’s a-wing,
Let scything talons
fret the meadow grass.
If you bear likeness
to the rough face
Staring up from a lake,
swallow grief, plunge
Your hands through,
grasp hematite
Lining soft silt
which like a father’s eyes
Beckons. Dredge. Repeat.
A man thinking on
His dead friend
will cast his dry flies
Only in shallow pools.
A boy, thinking the same,
Casts his deep.
The wind-soughed woods
And blue-hazed mountains
are a bruised prism—
Symbols of harm,
symbols of healing.
Do not, for a blessing,
cross barbed wire
Into pastures
where ponies graze.
No sugar can sweeten
their wildness now.
The question of loneliness
comes to this:
Whether you go on
watching swan-shapes bow
Under dry pines
to the encroaching dark
Or start back down
the untrafficked road.
