William Reichard  

Morning/Mourning (2013)

 

The two words, wed. Each, a beginning,
what starts a new day, what comes at the end

of a darkness. Moving toward death takes you
deeper into night. Death, then, is dawn.

I see her but don't. She's here because
I believe she’s here. Faith’s a weak thing,

demands too long a wait for proof.
I've learned well. My teachers are proud.

I take nothing on faith. If A, then B.
But life doesn't follow logic’s lead.

It was too hot that July when I turned
fifty. I found her the morning after.

She had climbed to the window.
Maybe she saw a guide there,

and went to greet him. Her new body
passed through the glass. The old one

remained, a hollow husk.
I will not live without my ghosts.

 

 

 

Prayer

 

Before bed he reaches to close the blind and sees, in the sky above the neighboring houses, a light no brighter than the stars, and just as small, a glimmering moving, first slowly, then faster as it gains altitude, and he knows it’s only a plane going somewhere but he wishes it was a heavenly messenger come to take him away to a world where there is night only when he wants night, where winter passes in one long breath, where no two things are alike yet each is related, where he can speak the first language, the one we lost when Babel’s tower fell, and he can know what it is the animals say, and he can speak in the tongues of the stars.

 

 

 

William Reichard is an author, editor, and educator. He’s published five poetry collections, most recently, Two Men Rowing Madly Toward Infinity (Broadstone Books, 2016).