Sunday, September 18, 2016

elegy


for k.c.c.k (9.19.68-1.7.13)

It will always be winter as we walk down the dirt road with our chapped hands shoved in the pockets of our little checkered blue jeans
The wind is so cold it bites the delicate membranes inside our noses,
and our eyes sting in the bitter air

Geese clap into flight
We dare each other to touch the teeth in the grim smiles
of dead coyotes hung along the barbed wire
For some reason these are the things I vividly recall from our life in the old hotel on the plains
I remember your birth-
the fear I held within me that you would come
and break my heart

It will always be your call that wakes me up in the middle of the night,
Baby brother
child of straw hair and blue eyes
 
What does it mean to you now?
Can you hear the songs I sing when I am lonely or
the prayers I whisper in early morning dark?
Do you think of the cold, the rasp of dry bluestem, the sweet early morning call of the Sandhill Cranes passing overhead while we sleep, warm in our beds, just children, 
safe