No, I don’t like going to Boston
these days cause it just makes me
homesick for Chris, wandering
new avenues as old friends,
sneaking glimpses of the world
through pilsner sun streaks,
this old town just a time I
can’t recreate, these days,
and Muncie aches with echoes
of forever-long summers, counting
keys and dodging geese, we
were there and then
time packed our bags and
we made home and made
home and –
In a Pittsburgh alleyway, I
find a bird, still and staring
at the back stairs of a strange
house, stop in wonder
then feel the sinking of that
age-old knowing: it is gone,
the world and its winds in its
wings and then a whispered
death, so final, so strange,
and my eyes well up, I
hope it didn’t feel alone.
When the earliest people
carved out lives, did the
first deaths startle them? Or
was there always this
knowing, grief as instinct?
We are miraculous, we,
mundane and then
stacks of stories we
hope will somehow
carry us forward.
I’m old enough to know
what people say on
the riptide days, and
grief is a teacher shrugging
at the way people offer
as wisdom the ideas they
use to comfort their
own trembling breath,
we might admit that,
somehow, we’ve never
made sense of time and
finalities, just birds in
some springtime, warbling
into the wind.
michael king 