D. Nurkse

Game With A Mad Bounce
 
The child and I are kicking
a pebble down the road–
 
the child is Gautama
the pebble is Saint Theresa
and I’m no one: or
 
we are both Gramsci
the road is Maimonides
and you are no one: or
 
the child counts steps to Frogurt
I’m an old man with cancer
the pebble is no one and
 
no one loves us so
 
it’s raining in the White Mountains
 
but here just the pang of wood smoke-–
 
here joy and sorrow
are a fence and a lit window–-
 
here God’s silence
is the silence of a cricket.

Author: D. Nurkse

D. Nurkse‘s latest poetry collection, A Country of Strangers, a “new and selected,” was published by Knopf in 2022.

Plume: Issue #100 December 2019