Hargrove Shoals
The habit of living taken away. The green chalked
with white dust, like grief, like death on the way
to the river. To lose a person like you who can say,
The eternal nature of changing matter, who longs
to go ahead to see who will be on earth in a year,
in a million years. The sun overthrows the cool,
the river struggles with the shoals and breathes out
the rapids. Breathes out, out, the river breathes in
so quietly I can’t hear. To lose a person like you
who can say, The terrible beauty. If you were here
you’d see how the coal dust rimes the river edge
in black sand, you’d see the lump-lunged miners
drinking beer in the shade, panting for their breath.
The people who just drove up, their child runs down
to the worn shoals broad as a spillway, and says,
We can wade in the shallows. Or maybe, Shadows.
Everything is in motion, the leaf shadows hurry.
Everything is in motion, here at Hargrove Shoals.
The wind begins to make its afternoon way down
the river. The child counts to see how many times.
Fifty-three times! There is no before, and no after.
Eternal nature of changing matter. The terrible beauty.
The Forward
How we have to go over and over things. Routine,
beaten path. Repeat to bury, or uncover. The same
story told to the same person, again, again, again.
Yet another of these poems about death. Yes.
Again. Survival by repetition. The effort behind
the smell of cut grass, the swing back, the push.
The criss-cross of dying blades. You and me
lying down on the grass after that long hot march,
hand in hand on the cool ground, and then, pain,
our muscles seized to the bone. We almost can’t
get up, but we do. Pain, and the body’s memory.
The going-on of all the other marches. The forward.
