The radio in the house next door
duets with the one in the house
opposite. A dog whines low. Tonight
I think of the unendurable losses we sustain
as the price of living. How they sunder us irrevocably
from the past, from our previous selves: you were here then,
now you are gone. I was whole then; now I am riven.
How we carry them always within us, a low-grade fever that lies
quiescent for weeks and then flares up, reckoning angel, in
an innocent moment. A photo falls out of the pages of a
book, a song dreams out at me from a doorway and
I am losing you, them, all over again. You are not
here; I cannot be there. Anymore. Immutable,
implacable knowledge.
The wind bleeds into the night; the young Buddha walks out
from his sheltered palace into the world, a constellation
dies away and cannot be replaced. The things that live
are mirrors of the ones we grieve for. A dog barks:
I think of the beloved dog I no longer have – the
silk of his ears; the level weight of his gaze –
Other dogs bark back; now the radios intone the
news to each other in a low hum. Down the street,
through the night, across loss and change, connection thrills.
Through my losses am I imprinted more resolutely into the contingent
world, am I able to take more of it into me. Now the radios fall
silent, now the wind fades gently away; and now, rising like
a promise behind the clouds – almost a buddhist moon.