Bruce Sager

The Wake

i.

The child is dead.

His sickness has gone off
to a cold storage. It is chilled, hungry
for something beyond room temperature,
needing to chew, hungry for a mass
greater than its own light weight,
the weight of the air.

But there is nothing for it.

There is nothing there.


ii.

This is none of your business now.
You must prepare for the wake.

You wash and wash
the strawberries and the blueberries,
even the melon pieces,
four times, five, there is no end
to your washing, as if you might make berries
and melons richer than nature’s
to the tongue, and softer
than his oldest shirt.

Red and blue, purple, green, orange
go grey under the water

and still you scrub and scrub.
You would wash all of the color
out of the house if you could,
right off the seaboard.

There is not enough water
in this entire world,
not enough grey.


iii.

And when you stood there
facing everyone you loved
you could not see their faces

you could not tear deeply enough
at your coat, your dress,
they were a profanity

you needed to be naked

and cupped your breast

and it weighed a baby weight

and for a moment
it was not your breast
that you held in your hand.


iv.

There is no going forward

there is no going back

if only you
were a clock
if only the spring
had exhausted itself
with your hands resting
where your hands
had come
to rest

no forward
no back

just this.


Bruce Sager lives in Westminster, Maryland. His work has won publication through contests judged by Billy Collins, Dick Allen and William Stafford. Several new books are forthcoming in late 2016 (via Hyperborea Publishing and BrickHouse Books).

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 26, 2016 at 1:36 PM

    The day that I learned that my father had committed suicide, it was sunny and pleasant. And that did not make any sense to me; it should have been raining. There was not enough gray.
    -- Gabrielle Graham

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Pessimistic ShrinkMarch 6, 2017 at 9:44 PM

    Bruce -- I just wanted to say that 'bodies shifting' like 'angels flying' doesn't work. I just bought a bottle of Vouvray after 43 years -- your inspiration.

    -- https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete

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