Poetry

I came to my senses with a pencil in my hand
And a piece of paper in front of me.

Oh, yesterday, that one, we all cry out. Oh, that one! How rich and possible everything was! How ripe, ready, lavish, and filled with excitement—how hopeful we were on those summer days, under the clean, white racing clouds.

Men wrap the bushes.
Schoolteachers bundle their charges
and send them onto the playground

Who has not thought of Johann Sebastian Bach—and please pronounce
That good man’s good name in German, whether you can or not—seated
At the keyboard of who cares what delubrum in the splendor of his isolation
Within the church of sound? The...

Then they were seized,
the four bodies,
the burning staves.

Between Wytheville, Virginia
and the North Carolina line,
he meets a wagon headed
where he’s been, seated beside
her parents a dark-eyed girl

As such things go, my reign of terror
felt impressive.