THE RECKONING
Shadows stretch across the pine floor
like a tide creeping higher on the beach
nearing the chairs where we sit in your apartment
as the water edges closer and closer.
If we could speak openly
I don’t think I would need to imagine an ocean
with a boat nearing the shore
to sense what remains unsaid
as barnacles that cling to a boat’s hull,
layer upon layer encrusted against
a once smooth bottom.
And the murmuration of starlings
which I can actually see outside your window
dipping and rising above the field
would not seem closer to articulation
than anything we can say.
3 AM
Worse than waking to his cries,
the dog’s low-throated moans
vibrate along the hard wood floors
all the way from the living room
up through the soles of my bare feet
as I stand to go and comfort him.
Four days later and still
his howls pool and eddy inside me,
as I wash the breakfast dishes,
place the purple asters in the fluted
China vase and walk the scrappy woods,
white pines towering
wind-blurred words flying
from their limbs like invisible birds
I have no way to name—
I am grateful to the dog
who has given grief a song.
What a long and wearing silence.
Can you hear me. I am singing.
