The Cry 

Paisley Rekdal

A man can cry, all night, your back
shaking against me as your mother
sleeps, hooked to the drip
to clear her kidneys from their muck
of sleeping pills. Each one white
as the snapper’s belly I once watched a man
gut by the ice bins in his truck, its last 
bubbling grunt cleaved in two
with a knife. The way my uncle’s rabbit
growled in its cage, screamed
so like a child that when I woke the night
a fox chewed through the wires
to reach it, I thought it was my own voice
frozen in the yard. And then the fox,
trapped later by a neighbor, who thrashed
and barked, as did the crows
that came for its eyes: the sound
of one animal’s pain setting off a chain
in so many others, until each cry dissolves
into the next grown louder. 
Even if I were blind
I would know night by the noise it made:
our groaning bed, the mewling
staircase, drapes that scrape
against glass panes behind which
stars rise, blue and silent.
But not even the stars
are silent: their pale waves
echo through space, the way my father’s
disappointment sags at my cheek,
and his brother’s anger
whitens his temple. And these
are your mother’s shoulders shaking
in my arms tonight, her thin breath
that drags at our window
where coyotes cry: one calling to the next
calling to the next, their tender throats
tipped back to the sky.

Once 

Paisley Rekdal

white field. And the dog
dashing past me 
into the blank,

toward the nothing. 
Or:
not running anymore but

this idea of him, still
in his gold 
fur, being

what I loved him for 
first, so that now 
on the blankets piled

in one corner
of the animal hospital
where they’ve brought him out

a final hour, two, 
before the needle
with its cold

pronouncements, 
he trembles with what
he once was: breath

and muscle puncturing 
the snow, sudden
stetting over the tips

of the meadow’s buried
grasses after–what
was it, a rabbit?

Field mouse? Dashing 
past me on my skis,
for the first time

faster, as if 
he had been hiding this,
his good uses. What

a shock to watch
what you know unfold
deeper into, or out of

itself. It is like
loving an animal: 
hopeless, an extravagance

we were meant for: 
startled, continually, 
by what we’re willing

to feel. The tips
of the grasses high
in the white. And the flat

light, drops of water
on the gold
coat, the red, the needle

moving in, then out, 
and now the sound of an animal
rushing past me in the snow.

The Vacation 

Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it. 

Enemies 

Wendell Berry

If you are not to become a monster,

you must care what they think.

If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,

and so become a monster

of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy

that is the way of liberty?

From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;

they are to you as sunlight

on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except

as monsters like yourself,

pitiable because unforgiving. 

*

No, no, there is no going back. 

Less and less you are 

that possibility you were. 

More and more you have become 

those lives and deaths 

that have belonged to you. 

You have become a sort of grave 

containing much that was 

and is no more in time, beloved 

then, now, and always. 

And so you have become a sort of tree 

standing over a grave. 

Now more than ever you can be 

generous toward each day 

that comes, young, to disappear 

forever, and yet remain 

unaging in the mind. 

Every day you have less reason 

not to give yourself away. 

A Litany for Survival 

Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children’s mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours;

 

For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

We were never meant to survive.

 

And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

 

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.