John Early Remembers the Moment of His Wife's Death, and: Early Rising

John Early Remembers the Moment of His Wife's Death

He remembered that he'd walked out toward the strand
late afternoon to fetch a net and found
his grandfather abroad with several more,
their faces snared in lashings of dark weeds
that crossed the caverns where their eyes would be
so that he had to catch his sleeve before
the old man caught the full of him and stepped
aside to kiss his cheek. Her sickness was
upon her five or seven days, but not
enough to hold him from the strand, or from
the sea itself, although those last two days
he'd kept to home and did what little bit
she might contrive until, late afternoon,
she'd had her cup, and he'd gone off to fetch the net.
Her glance upon him as he closed the gate
(he now imagined) would've coaxed him back
to say goodbye again. But when he met
his grandfather he knew that she was gone
because his grandfather was dead past forty years,
and all his boat were dead along with him
with not a one of them to find the shore.
On many nights to come John Early yearned
to resurrect that moment when he knew
his wife was dead, and feel the old man's lips
once more upon his cheek, unlearn his news.

Early Rising

John Early knew that when he raised his lids
his wife of forty years would not appear
before him with the sun off Ardmore caught
within the salt-spun netting of her hair
the way she had that morning when he watched
her trudging up the trail from Cleary's landing
to the higher strand where, looking back
and with her sliver of a hand against
her twisted brows, she watched an empty sea.

"Do you remember how," he would've said,
(had she appeared) "I loitered there above
the beach for weeks before your father stopped
to ask my business and my name?" And though
John Early knew the sun would rise and that
his eyes without her trudging up that hill
would blink, he knew, alas, the sea in waves
distinguished for their lack of human grief,
was strange in its ability to bear

with every shudder hard against the rocks,
the lower strand, a premonition or
a memory for one like Early who
comes loitering these mornings just above
the sloping pathway to the stony beach.
Where he would have her she could never be
unless in memory he found her there,
her bruised feet splayed against the slope, her hair
salt-spun and glistening, her voice unheard.