About the Dead: Poems

Crossing the Gap

[11] C rO S S i n G T h e G A P Try asking ernie Watts, a local bricklayer, to explain how after a long day of work and league night at the Lucky Strike he can glide across the kitchen floor, Old Style hovering like a ghost on his breath, bowling shoes slung over one shoulder, singing fly me to the moon to his wife Cheryl. And when he dips her over the linoleum like it was their first homecoming all over again, ask him to put into words what that sinking is, that shudder in his chest, as he notices the wrinkles gathering at the corners of her mouth. he’d rather tell you about the time they rode the Tail of the Dragon the year after they’d married, crossing Deals Gap at the Tennessee state line on his ’77 Triumph Silver Jubilee. how they heard talk of a young couple dying on that same stretch of road a week before, and how hard she held onto him that day— curve after potentially deadly curve. Afterwards, in bed, she’ll reach for the virginia Slims on the nightstand, and he’ll open the windows behind the headboard as a summer breeze creeps past the lithesome curtains— wild grass and honeysuckle mixing with the tobacco. if the drone and flicker of a gathering storm should disrupt the silence of the room, she’ll tighten the wing nut of her body behind his, so close that when her lips brush against the nearly imperceptible hairs on the back of his neck he’ll be convinced there is no other life but this. ...