by Margaret Reges
The wind and rain starting near Mount Garfield, far off on the coast like a blue shadow.
You can track rain this way from dune to dune. Rain will strike the hair and the head and eyes.
Let death lie breathing while the rain makes shapes. Let the crow land and let it say a word.
Borage. Hunt. Betony. Hunt. Rosemary. Hunt. Aconite. Hunt.
Maybe some sassafras by the lake path. You can feel the humming beds of time.
If I could I would take your ashes there, down where the dune grass shifts in pale green lines.
My ghost was with you in the hospital. I wouldn’t look at you. I wouldn’t speak.
Dragging some part of me that can’t be dragged. Leave that apple tree so the birds can eat.
Crabapple. Hunt. Dogwood. Hunt. Thundercloud. Hunt. Hollyhock. Hunt.
You can’t have a dialogue with ashes. Look in the mirror. Lightning strikes there.
The sound of the rain before it comes down, from a great distance, rushing at great speed.
*
Before the sun rises, the quaking grass is gray. The modular bridges are black against a gray sky,
as is the dune grass, and the foxtail millet, red milkweed, amaranth, and the tangled stems of ragweed.
The weeds in the ditch travail. The hand and its lines travail.
I read the palm of a woman whose lines were written in smoke inside a glass tube.
Whose lines were etched on the underside of pond ice. Whose lines were written on the church’s roof nail.
Such lines are written on a coin to be placed in the mouth. They are written on a wire in the heart.
Is this a true field of vision? Is the elegy a needle in the heart? You held my shoulders and we stood by the river.
I had written a letter to you out loud on my walks. I said it to the houses and the trees.
To the black sky and the crown of leaves. To the water in the river, gray and white.
If you were to wake again, the eclipse would rise from its bed. The egret would step slowly under one star.
What is the depth of the lake and what are the mountains and hills? What is the music heard at death?
I only know that you were the long day. This was October. The waves were so high they lapped against the grass.
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