Dispatches from Across the Border II

Two Words

Ring the bells that still can ring,

forget your perfect offering,

there is a crack, a crack in everything

that's how the light gets in.

—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

The language, my refuge, deserts me

every time I get in the truck, twist

around and check behind, backing out

the carport wondering what I’ll be able to say

when I run into someone in town, muttering

incoherently as I head down this dead-end

road, making the right onto Springtown,

holding my breath, biting the inside of my lip

as I pass his house, reminding myself

hours later to breathe as I walk through winter

woods, summoning this useless tongue

to come up with something to make sense

of this sorrow, leaving me mute hours days

a lifetime later, riding my bike onto the ghost

of a rail bed where out of nowhere I hear

a freight whistle from 1977 and twist around

wondering if I’ll see Cael, Nancy, Addie

laying pennies on the long-gone tracks

at the end of Coffey Road, the whistle a wail

rising from some unthinkably deep cleft

in the earth as I pedal hard against the wind,

just ahead of the rumbling train, over the bridge,

blood on my tongue, nothing to say. Just no.

No!

                           *

 A second a day a week a lifetime later,

in the instant the despairing sun sets

behind the ridge I glimpse a gap, a crack,

not a star, mind you, a tiny telescope piercing

the black veil of a night sky where I can see

him beside me in the truck, pedaling

at my elbow on the trail, walking in woods,

on the couch whenever I swing by for a beer,

a hug, a laugh, right there in that impossible

place to place, a place where there is no time,

no beginning, no end, that place beyond

language where yesterday is today is already

tomorrow, a place where worthless words  

come and go with the arrogance of blind saints

and wide-eyed sinners, their long-winded

platitudes of meaning and purpose fading

into an endless darkness behind my tongue

as I climb this mountain each day, muddied boots

on ice age boulders transformed without a word

into warm soft sand, bare feet in Hatteras dunes,

waving sea oats, steamed shrimp and clams

in the salt air, aroma of Old Bay wafting up

from the long beach, the undeniable surf rolling

in, rolling in, as it did yesterday, as it will

tomorrow, our sweet boy racing down the beach,

diving into a perfect wave. Only one word left

in this mouth full of sores.

Of course. Yes, of course. Yes.

—SL, New Paltz, NY; Port Royal, SC, January 2024