Traveling Light, and: Your Life

TRAVELING LIGHT / Christopher Buckley for Cheryl Take this hour the dusty sycamores dissolving into autumn, the amber light of 3:00 that's been saying loss for as long as you can remember, and you have the hour of sidewalks and the dying blear of the world, the street's vacant stare toward the dark, after all the yard sales of September, the scraps of the past cashed in. This is the day after it was time to go, get out from under things, to travel light while it was warm— you left furniture and four coats, the pomegranates hanging heart-like with a broken grace.. . The wind makes its wishes on the last leaves blowing loose and the stark air clutches at the migrating riffs of birds. Now the cars... now the long savannas of city light shine up and the deep blue runs out its string of stars and anyone can see our spare design, how there is a need for wings purely for the points beyond, for something darting through us like a bird's call south by night, and me whistling a little after it with no intention to call it back. The Missouri Review · 27 YOUR LIFE / Christopher Buckley in memory of Douglas & Marie Salem I was tending the garden Good Friday, drinking water from the hose when they called... azaleas and geraniums teemed, the whole ruddy spring went on as if you were less than flowers, the antipathy of birds. . . It goes wrong out on the road and we stand no better than dandelions, dust in the headlights over dry fields. The winds discuss us and our life is, and our love is commended to the rocks and thorns and thrown by. How simple to drink water, breathe and be in this world. How soon the lamp is trimmed, taken into the next room and we're left standing in our pale shirts nearer the dark. A little salt in the pocket, a shadow from smoke, and when we cup water and draw it close to drink we're reminded what we held and how this body is such a frail boat for the soul. 28 · The Missouri Review ...