Requiem, deluge
Leaving aside, for a moment, that the deep water was deep; that the thorns we scraped aside in finding clearance left us scarred; that the scarecrows warned, in our advance, to turn against the wind; that even after all these depths, we never formed conclusions:
Holding Hands / Feelingly
I fear the fading shoulders;
how I knew that you were there —
How I knew? I counted fingers
held wide open against air —
And where I ended? Where the you began?
I knew I only knew it then —
◆
I knew I only knew it then
and still I think I know
your feet
as they walk briskly up the hill —
I know the overlapping happened —
knew the overlapping left —
And still, in calling out your name, I hold.
◆
I have pity for your body
in its monument of skin;
As you walk, footfalled, through the thorns / falsely, headlong, holding on;
a crucible of laughter;
an I that’s wrecked within;
If language were the thing that holds us / language were the skin.
Possibility (an Opening)
1
At night, your eyes:
Could I do more the hands?
To feel the wreckage, truly.
To see the lessing day.
The world must be asleep to these:
dreams; happenings; slippings of the seams.
I imagine a paradise without you.
I imagine a paradise you’ve left.
And light; and vapors;
and every sparrow’s gone?
2
It was a delicate light, exceeding.
Expecting to be shown.
Legs, careening.
Arms — do they have arms?
We huddled there, in our amazement,
as one looking at a storm.
We a wilderness in passing.
We a wilderness we’d walk.
And cracks; and clusters;
and every sparrow, light is breath.
—
Aaron Lopatin is a poet and teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, and elsewhere.