Looking for You Among Hiroshigie’s
People on a Bridge
I looked back supposedly curious.
But besides curiosity I might have had other reasons…
Losing breath I often swerved.
If anyone saw me, would have thought I was dancing.
Conceivably, my eyes were open.
Wislawa Szymborska
“Lot’s Wife”
Needing you I open to the beginning
and it's titled The Particular
Imagination and I’m about to start
reading when I see your fortune
tucked into the spine, I think you were
needing to remember so you’d saved
it, flat now as it is and you’ve been
dead ten years this year. Still
what books I have of yours this
is one, Wislawa Szymborska’s People
On a Bridge, I choose. See, we had the same
taste or maybe we tasted
the same at one time or maybe
standing long hours at the stove,
the cutting board, the cold meat
going into the brine we knew
by the time I came that day for soup
we’d bring each our bowl and we’d eat
and eat and eat and come away
with plenty. To spice it, and not
be cliché: root ginger and fresh
every time chives or green onion
our own measure of salt.
How the carrots float beside
the shredded breast and the bread
flat beneath all that butter—I watched
you all at once dip it into your broth
and hold it there long enough
for it to drop off but like a heron
stalking on the edge
of the water you drew it up and it fell
on your tongue and I wanted to
love food that way I wanted to make
you or someone like you
soup that you’d hold on the bowl
of your tongue long enough to soothe
all the slaughter it took to get there,
spoon after spoon after spoon.
When you were nearing the end I wonder if it was
enough, reading Szymborska, lining her
spine with “Our first and last
love is…Self love. 😊” Once, you sent
me a whole page of typed smilie
faces and you just signed your name
and for days and days it was almost
ok and that got me
through. Seeing you now means
I have to turn around and scan
the shelves if I’m inside this particular
room or, if I go outside, you’re everywhere,
and together we watch all the moons
year after year glide into their light
and dark the way you glided
into mine, the way, maybe after
because I didn’t know this
particular habit of yours, not
until after you died and your wife
gave me all your poetry books
you’d highlight the poems you’d read
or wanted
to talk about and one of the last
in this little book was “Letters of
the dead” and I find very much
I’d like to hear how you felt
about this one, what struck you, were you
struck? And how long did you
carry the wound and bruise of it
and did you read it after something
particular happened or did you open up
enough to let it slip through because I can
see you sitting in a room listening
to the last of the one you love fall
into the thick fingers of her own
god come to catch her and finally be
contented there and you could
have been twisted and divided or just
at that right spot where it all makes sense
putting it down and walking away
and maybe you thought you’d go along
with it but something, a kid’s ball falling
in the yard, or the way the tree received
the weight of that same kid
in the seat of the swing, squeaking
the speed increasing, the clouds
coming and going like they do in a wind
always ready to carry them.
I don’t know who’s dying for you
when you read that poem, but for me,
when I read it today, surprisingly it’s not
you. Somehow I see someone else
maybe just Sorrow herself,
and she’s a little easier to manage because
listen, you’d eaten that fortune cookie
and you’d saved that piece of paper
and for some reason I think you’d know
I’d open it though how could you know,
how long has it been since your tongue and lips
dusted those crumbs, how long
has it been since we were both alive enough
to talk about it all, or any one specific
thing, like Szymborska, and her poem “Lot’s
Wife” or some of her others you’d
highlighted while we sipped your soup
and you handed me, like a true friend,
my own measure of salt.
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