It’s love you left, we’ll say when you never come back for bells for the dead, for the grave stone heads: the only ones that don’t keep count. Don’t we know it’s love that keeps you away, that marks every mile devotion? You would’ve went to the end with each one, made Orpheus turn back. Would’ve fell / would’ve leapt / would’ve left. The living is easy / the leaving is easy / living with ghosts, it was easy to give up your home to your father, struck with the same grief of living, demanding what are you gonna do with my mama’s house? Shorn grass & damp dirt: they’ll put me in the middle. I kick the ground like tires, feeling dumb without flowers / tokens / grief / anything in my hands. You’ll bring me back home, won’t you? Stamp it down, as if the flat earth could answer sometimes this, too, is love. You left. Copyright © 2016 Gary Jackson. Used with permission of the author. |
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