Memory of Breathing, and: Eventually, Birds Must Land
Rent from DeepDyve- Memory of Breathing, and: Eventually, Birds Must Land
Memory of Breathing
After the diagnosis near-stroke the cutting you gave me your prednisone two chairs
this ennui. I received some white carnations a box of after-death
notes I didn’t open to find you standing mute before me your hands clasped
like a troubled schoolboy. Tell me again about the snow on your coffin how you’ll remain under sod a thousand years
how it is damn near impossible to fit through a keyhole with a hump of debt on your back how rain is really a god
you believe you can reach by massing your every collection into a single mountain I will not keep.
Still we watch you breathe. Still we ride out each exhale until we run out of shore. [End Page 64]
Eventually, Birds Must Land
Just as he had suspected, the bar-tailed godwits headed out over the open ocean and flew south through the Pacific. They did not stop at islands along the way. Instead, they traveled up to 7,100 miles in nine days . . .
from the observations of Robert E. Gill Jr. in the New York Times
Imagine the whole ocean Flying it over days miles Sleep as another name for auto-pilot
Ocean no
land Sleep with wings spread water below five thousand miles to the fore
Imagine God
beyond the confines of a week One must open to belief in horizon line
of above and under
navigating wind swells rearing How many breaths before death is overcome [End Page 65]
ocean-locked stretch
Sea and sky as a means to breaking open Land
the lover beyond the seam [End Page 66]
Ronda Broatch is the author of Shedding Our Skins (Finishing Line P, 2008) and Some Other Eden (2005). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Ronda is a May Swenson Poetry Award finalist. Moon Path Press is publishing her next collection in early 2015. A Seattle native, Ronda currently co-edits the literary journal Crab Creek Review.
