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Poetry
by Sean Johnston
Somehow
Just when you think you have recovered
from the one particular death that matters,
another shyly intrudes. More removed
this time, somehow
—featured in some anecdotes
on your paternal side, not often, mind you, but
included in a Christmas e-card you sometimes click on,
though more often not
—more removed, yes, but not
from the human involved.
At the backyard
dinner party the woman smiling, looking lean
and tanned—you thought
the sunshine was made
for her, and felt glad for her, she having made her
life of leisure from years of thick-necked work and
scrabbling.
And as you walked
home, your own wife beside you, and pregnant, of all things,
you gave her hand a squeeze and said all is good—
not out loud,
thank God, but by your silence and easy breath
in the cooling day. Then: it’s so sad she’s dying, you
heard your wife say.
And somehow, for once, it was
a kind of love that had made of you an ass.
[Distillate © HA&L + Sean Johnston | {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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