The Wind Makes an Offer of Salvation

Brian Simoneau
| poetry

 

No one flies kites as once they did
so now I carry shopping bags
across your empty lots, topple
careful mounds of leaves, find the gaps
in window frames to dance the flames
your scented candles cradle. You
have forgotten to feel me flush
your face, misplaced your affection
for unchecked speed. When you listened
to the sea in shells you salvaged
by its shore, did you never feel
the sand I tossed, never suspect
the conch was rendering my prayer
for you? I drag the earth itself
across invisible fences
which you obey and shred the edge
of every flag the same. I wreck
your roof and loose before you blue
of sky, clouds dispersing—call it
infinity, ever a trick
of visible light. Every breath
you take makes infinite passage,
even the last. You will carry
nothing with you. Be quit of tongues
and rest your bones. Under my touch
even an unstrung hole makes song.

Brian Simoneau is the author of No Small Comfort (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and River Bound (C&R Press, 2014). His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Waxwing, and other journals. Originally from Lowell, MA, he lives near Boston with his family.

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