rain
but nothing is
made pure
birds sing and
the refrigerator hums
and the streets take us
from one anonymous town to
the next
three days
then four
and the bleeding horse drinks
what he can
staggers drunkenly through
these fields of
the newly murdered
falls to his knees
even as
the trigger is pulled
a clean shot
but nothing so pure as
an act of mercy
not language itself
but the need for it
the weight of silence
the child
has been murdered
[i]pause[/i]
i love my wife
[i]pause[/i]
the child has been
murdered
[i]stop[/i]
cold sunlight down tracy street
on a sunday morning
and i am almost able to believe that
the past can be left behind
i am tired of these abstractions
like [i]america[/i] and [i]god[/i]
i have moved awkwardly into the
21st century and brought with me only the bleeding horse
and it walks
slowly from room to room
without ever casting a shadow
and there is a child somewhere
who will be the next one
to die horribly and there are linda’s sisters moving
through this lush green landscape
ten years after the cancer
devoured her
[i]nothing is more important
than motion[/i]
[i]nothing is more important
than love[/i]
these are the words i write with my
wife and son
two hundred miles away
and i know them to be true but
speaking them out loud is a
different thing altogether
i have learned that silence is
not always failure
is sometimes just weight
it can be carried
but only for a short while
