Britt Melewski presents a poem of love, need, and quiet desperation.
—
Desperate River
—for K
I like you best
when I am hung over,
when I can barely stand
or see—feel even
less. You’re there
fighting through it
and you are beautiful,
inching across a field
piled in soft rural fog,
carrying a load
of who-knows-what,
your face stained
with soot.
Far off, a man works
through ice for a fish—
the sky silly,
freckled
with strontium 90.
Countrywomen
build the sprouts still—
they who survive—
nothing more.
All we have are the tarps,
the brokenness
our watchful faces garner.
There are so few
choices left for us
to make. Good
thing we saved those
pennies. I weep
in your breast,
call myself a fool.
You sooth me
as did the rains,
long walks in the spongy
woods which crackle
now, a fracture of pyrite.
At dawn
we do the twist
in silence, gather
sticks for fuel. Later,
we will raise the pickax
and say, “this
is the life, isn’t it?”
My stainless steel
watch— the one you gave me
years ago—, it stopped.
I wear it yet
like a peeled skin.
It is my swing.
I put it hard
into the ground. We build
what we can from what is left.
For a moment, you smile,
and— God— I see it.
***
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