Variation on a love poem written by Ilya Kaminsky
After your death I could not stop
thinking of decay. The danger of absence
we called siren test. The thing
I cannot name is the thing that will never
exist, always inches
from my fingers. Like this––
I promised
I would not cry at the funeral. Not
that it was inescapable but that I have known
the way the body becomes
an object. That the earth was cold
when we parted it. Late October but becoming frozen
already. The minister led us
in prayer and I tore
my collar. Buried the scrap
in the creek you fished in. Not that our dangers
are absent but the way those fish swim
in circles under cracking
sheets of ice. Not elegy but names
pressed into dark leaves. Icicles breaking off
under low branches.
Wolves in the distance howled
at nothing.
Birds circled under storm clouds heavy
with rain. They called it transformation,
rebirth. Forgive me––
a heron fell in the cold water.
Bella Rotker won 2nd place in the Charles Crupi Memorial Poetry Contest for Michigan High School students. For more information on the contest, please visit the Albion College English Department website.
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