Still Life in Winter
Invocation
Gulf
Equinox
Sometimes I Have to Remind Myself
All day I’ve been failing to take a long walk into the snow.
All day I’ve been saying there’s still time.
I used to imagine I could think like this weather.
The hush. The weight. The cold. But let’s face it,
our children are leaving us, childhoods
written in full. I can no longer pretend
I have wisdom to offer, and besides
the nature of wisdom is that it arrives too late.
There is no cold, only heat’s absence.
It’s time. I bundle up. Step into the back yard.
I try to see myself in the ice of a frozen birdbath
but where my face should be are wings.
Fractal. Fracture. Inverted, bone-grey sky.
first ask grace
bless we who are about to receive
we drove south around the big lake
silver stripe into the mouth of a broken promise
slept together in someone else’s bed
frumpy floral overstuffed comforter
slow rattle & shadow of an old ceiling fan
humid skin hungry skin
we posed in the background of each other’s photos
ate each other’s laughter & felt full
we stepped into the cold black water
so long ago & yet still I taste the sand on our lips
we prayed for forgiveness
in case we didn’t get away with it but we did
we did
Is there a word
for the sound
when the body’s shore
unlocks the ocean
of another body?
In the life my mind invents for us
we walk this beach
each morning
as the tide goes out.
We hold hands.
The water is orange.
The water is gold.
It hurts.
Go to bed in one season, arise in another
to find nothing about my life has changed.
The same soreness in the same bones,
aches in every place where one part
of the body joins another. The leaves
look the same as they did yesterday,
which is to say like leaves,
for now. It’s morning. It’s autumn.
You are the danger I veer toward.
Sometimes I Have to Remind Myself
I’ve gotten all I was promised.
More.
Anything after this moment?
A gift —
but undeserved —
such damage I’ve done.
Amorak Huey 's fourth book of poems is Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
