Dear L—,
You asked me to help find him, and I’m sorry.
It is, all of it, a colossal hurt that makes me wonder
If what I taught you two in poetry class was amiss:
to focus sight only on the beloved or the grieved.
Well, it opens a barren shell of terror. Try and
we can see him—one bright-black pearl—hand
A bouquet to Cornelius Eady and introduce himself
full-named. Wrap poems round arrows nestling
A bespoke quiver. I spent the morning, L—, taping
curled edges of his arrow-poems. I hold this sight,
But it slips and my own hands emerge. I struggle for
a side-door in, or out. Have you ever played piano
Alone and softly, and lower an ear? You wait for
how far it will ring and fade. Absorb into the room.
But then you bring it back, pounding. He said he would
teach a computer how to love. L—, that heroism’s another land
Harder than the kindest thing to teach a human:
talk to yourself as if you were talking to you-as-a-child,
And wish her no suffering. Have you considered
quarries? Souvenirs of famed monuments and buildings
—we see them in gift shops—but we are not shown
the scalloped earth, marble or slate, slabs carved of
Veins pressed by minerals and time. In rushes rain.
You could say sacked, defiled, hollowed, or changed.
A deep blue lake akin to a wound. You approach,
step back to respect its scope. Dive.
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